Bride of the Blog
presents
Bullet Ballet: John Woo's Hong Kong Action Flicks Explode into the 4K Marketplace
The Hong Kong action cinema of the early 1990s strong-arms its way into the category of "Often Imitated, Never Duplicated" with the savagery of a well-placed pistol-whip.
And John Woo's 1992 Cantonese police-procedural carnage-fest, Hard Boiled, remains a benchmark for all those action directors who can only dream of creating something as mind-blowing.
The iconic teahouse sequence alone is a masterclass in escalation, where a simple bust spirals into a whirlwind of flying bodies, shattering glass, and collateral damage.
And of course, there's the outrageous Hospital finale: a sprawling 40-minute firefight that turns medical corridors into battle zones.
Let's face it: all of the painful attempts to even mimic the technical precision and hyperreal action of John Woo's work during this period of ultra-violent cine-pulp cannot help but come off as campy parody.
If you've never seen Chow Yun Fat leaping in slow motion whilst firing two 45s with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammunition, you owe yourself; just so you can experience how the original buries all that may follow.
If Tropes Could Explode...
Seriously...Tequila?
Yes, that's the main character's name. He's the ultimate hard-boiled detective: toothpick chomping, rule-bending, and quick with a quip. Oh, and he also plays clarinet at a local jazz club. Pretty sure Dirty Harry didn't do that.
Everything about Tequila's world pokes fun at the American buddy-cop movie: a police commissioner who's always on his case, an ex-girlfriend he's trying to get back, and a partner who dies in a hail of gunfire, too soon of course, to the unreachable bliss of retirement.
But these nods to Hollywood are just the canvas on which Woo spatters his amped up melodrama: heroic poses, balletic gunfights, exploding sets, and thousands of blood squibs.
Legends in the Making
Long before Chow Yun Fat was crouching with tigers and hiding with dragons, he'd secured his legacy as a supreme high priest of the action genre, working as hero or heavy in these classic Woo films.
But let's not forget about Tony Leung, who is just a baby boy in Hard Boiled, but still plays the conflicted undercover operative "Alan" with a complexity that would make him a legend of Asian cinema. (He's also pretty good as Shang Chi's dad in that Ten Rings movie.)
I still get chills when Leung's character has to show the ultimate criminal loyalty: showing his new Triad boss that he's a good fella by gunning down his old Triad boss. After the assassination, tears in his eyes, he gives his new boss the most painful, hard-core smile I've ever seen in a movie. It elevates the whole film.
When "Tequila" and "Alan" team up, they transcend the buddy-cop dynamic (and their cheesy names) through powerhouse acting performances, and swirling storms of lead.
Symphony of Destruction
Heroic Bloodshed
At its core, Hard Boiled exemplifies John Woo's brand of maverick filmmaking, where action isn't just spectacle, it's a vehicle for themes of brotherhood, regret, and redemption.
His unparalleled camera work: sweeping tracking shots, barrages of practical effects, seamless blending of slow motion, and quick paced, smash editing continue to influence directors and animators, despite a world of CGI excess.
If Pixels Were Bullets
Hard Boiled is the first of John Woo's Hong Kong action films to get a 4K release, and it does not disappoint. It's soon to be followed by The Killer (Chow Yun Fat is the cynical sensitive assassin in this one) as well as Bullet in the Head and the A Better Tomorrow Trilogy, a magnum opus of mayhem that spans the globe and the decades.
John Woo's foray into American cinema yielded some success with films like Face/Off and Mission Impossible: 2 (though this is often regarded as a misstep for the franchise). But a post-911 paranoia about the effects of movie violence brought a watered-down aesthetic to the action genre, and it seems Woo's work wasn't welcome anymore.
Despite all of this, Woo Gems from the early 90s endure as raging reminders of what pure adrenaline looks like, and that it can be elevated to an art form.
Whispers of a comeback are in the air (along with some flying doves), but we'll see.
The Final Frame...
"So," you may be asking, "what's with the baby?"
Oh yeah. He's the best part of Hard Boiled.
He saves the day.
You'll just have to find out how.
