Director Chad Stahelski mapped Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly directly onto the climax—three combatants approaching each other in a graveyard-like space (here, Sacré-Cœur in Paris), music swelling, time dilating. Stahelski also cited the Japanese Zatoichi blind swordsman films as the blueprint for Donnie Yen's character, the sense of a master assassin navigating the world through pure technique and memory.