Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
John Woo's Hong Kong films have cult status in the West, a feat I ascribe mostly to his unrestrained approach to action. His heroes don't head out, guns blazing, to take on half a dozen criminals or a small squad of soldiers; A Better Tomorrow II has, literally, hundreds dead in a single shoot-out. Explosions, fast cuts, slow motion, blood, it's all there -- and there, and there, and there, for fifteen minutes at a time.
Hard Boiled was his last before departing for fame and fortune in America, but the movie it's most similar to isn't one of his later Hollywood efforts: it's Shoot 'Em Up, last year's deliberately outrageous action pastiche. It's not just because Tequila (Chow Yun-Fat) is a one-man killing machine -- in one sequence he attacks a fifty-strong gathering of Johnny's (Anthony Wong) gangsters -- but because it's absolutely ridiculous. Four words: Maternity. Ward. Gun. Fight.
It's appropriate that Woo's first American film was the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Hard Target. It's one of Van Damme's best, for what little that means; it's not notably better than his others, nor better than those movies being pumped out for Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris and other action icons. He's not a great director.
Hard Boiled doesn't really have much to recommend it other than excessive violence. The script is awful. The leads are excellent, by which I mean that there's much amusement to be had watching the great Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung and Anthony Wong try to bring depth to hollow action-hero stereotypes.
Good for popcorn and a laugh.