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HARD
BOILED
AKA:
God of Guns ||
Hard-Boiled || Ruthless Super-Cop
Year:
1992 Reviewer: Rob
Daniel
The
entry point to the Heroic Bloodshed genre for many British
lovers of Hong Kong cinema, 'Hard Boiled' still delights an
amazing twelve years after it was made.
It was also John Woo's Dear John... to the Hong Kong
film industry and by 1993 he was stateside with 'Hard
Target', and has not yet produced an English language film
to match his Cantonese classics.
But,
while Hollywood compromised him, John Woo allowed his
imagination and cinematic showmanship full flight in 'Hard
Boiled', strapping his trademark visuals and themes to an RPG
and launching them into orbit.
Yep,
we're talking favourite films here so only superlatives will
do. I am also
assuming that fans of DDUK are very familiar with the film so
this review contains spoilers.
In
1989 Woo had raised the bar of Hong Kong action cinema with 'The
Killer' after setting it with his brace of 'A
Better Tomorrow' films.
With 'Hard Boiled' he clearly wanted to make 'The
Godfather' of action movies; a film that so perfectly realizes
its ambitions it would become a point of comparison for any
other genre offering.
Like
'The Killer', 'Hard Boiled's plot is a straightforward story
of honour and friendship, loyalty and betrayal.
Chow is supercop Tequila, obsessed with tracking down
arms traffickers in Hong Kong.
After a classic opening teahouse fire fight, in which
Tequila kills a key trafficker in revenge for a fallen fellow
officer, he sets his sights on Johnny Wong (Wong), arms dealer
number one and a fully fledged psycho to boot.
Wong
has recruited Tony (Leung), a hotshot hitman, and makes him
prove his fealty by assassinating his boss, Mr Hoi (Kwan), an
archaic crime lord bound by a code of honour.
Unbeknownst to Johnny or Tequila, Tony is an undercover
agent also attempting to break the arms dealing ring.
As with 'The Killer' the two finally unite, taking the
battle to Johnny and his arsenal of weapons concealed hidden
in a hospital. Here
begins one of the most beautifully handled action scenes in
cinema history, lasting an incendiary thirty minutes.
For
the growing number of Woo detractors underwhelmed by his
American films (and for Anthony Wong who derided Woo as just
another action director, reportedly because he was angered at
Kuo Chui's villain being given the same status as his), 'Hard
Boiled' is the ultimate riposte and a scintillating display of
his directorial power.
Woo
directs with the zeal of a dying man completing his one last
masterwork, which is not far from the truth.
From the opening teahouse gunfight (a reference to past
Wong Fei Hung films and HK's action film legacy?) John Woo
revels in the language of film, directing with the energy his
inspiration Martin Scorsese applied a year earlier to 'GoodFellas'.
Woo uses deep backgrounds and extreme close ups to set
the scene, tracking amongst the protagonists and antagonists,
effortlessly establishing who is who.
He also pays homage to Sam Peckinpah, another key
influence, with expert use of slow motion to punctuate the
action and accentuate the impact.
Even step printing, ubiquitous in HK action cinema at
the time, is brilliantly used to convey wounded movement.
The
opening teahouse scene and the climactic hospital
conflagration are so intensely mounted and memorable 'Hard
Boiled's other action sequences are frequently overlooked.
But, the warehouse action scene contains some of the
film’s most amazing stunts and is bracketed by Tony Leung's
stellar performance.
Acting
is often overlooked in Hong Kong action movies, dismissed with
a sniff that these films are undisciplined copies of more
respectable Western, or even mainland Chinese or Japanese
cinema. While
Chow Yun Fat is the charismatic star of the film, Leung offers
the most compelling performance.
His boyish good looks frequently clouded by guilt and
doubt, Leung offers a tour-de-force of conflicting emotion as
he massacres to curry favour with Johnny.
'Hard Boiled' for many was an introduction to Chow and
Leung, but also to Wong and Phillip Chui, who memorably plays
Mad Dog, Johnny's lethal, though honour-bound, right hand man.
Watching Kuo as the hero of numerous Shaw Brothers
movies, or as a sympathetic friend in 'Lady
in Black', means trying to forget his formidable
performance here. Wong
too, despite his bad mouthing, is unforgettable as Johnny, icy
cold with ambition and greed.
Takashi Miike fans will also spot a cameo from Jun
Kunimura in the teahouse scene, and Woo himself pops up at
Tequila's jazz bar owning mentor.
Woo
pushes his actors to express the pinnacles of emotion, and
while this robs his films of subtlety it crucially lends
weight to his spectacle.
And Tequila's one-man army assault on Johnny's men in
the warehouse is an awesome spectacle.
Maybe the scene is often overlooked because a warehouse
is a conventional setting for an action scene, and the
teahouse and hospital are fresher to Western eyes.
But, the warehouse holds many treasures; explosive
stunts with motorbikes, stuntmen (and main actors?) consumed
by explosions, and an exclamation mark courtesy of a trademark
Woo visual, the two leads face-to-face, guns temple to chin.
Logic
is frequently defied as Woo's cinematic swagger turns plot
contrivances into directorial élan.
Echoing 'The Killer', Tequila investigates a hit
executed by Tony and is seemingly telepathically drawn to the
hollowed-out volume of Shakespeare (a master of revenge and
violence) in which Tony's murder weapon was concealed.
Cries of "As if!" are beside the point, Woo's
aim is to emphasize the bond his central characters share.
Woo
repeats this flamboyant act for the climax, as Tequila's girl
(Mo) finds a flower in her pocket at exactly the right time to
begin the evacuation of the patients.
Realism is not John Woo's watchword, and he proves
ostentation works wonders in a film with character and heart.
'Hard
Boiled' has been accused of lacking the emotional core
of 'The Killer'. While
the film's only female character is sidelined until the finale
'Hard Boiled' is awash with emotion.
The problem may be that Tequila is less interesting
than the morally compromised Tony.
While Tony is trapped between two worlds and forced to
jettison his principles, Tequila is a square-Joe myopically
pursuing justice and that is never as riveting.
But,
the film contains those frissons of unabashed sentiment that
mark Woo's best work. For
storytelling and character development 'The Killer's key scene
is the shoot-out on the beach when Ah Long has to rescue a
young girl caught in the crossfire.
'Hard Boiled' riffs on this moment frequently in the
final thirty minutes, as innocent civilians frequently stray
into the paths of bullets, and reaches a giddy zenith as Tony
and Mad Dog locked in a deadly duel, lower their guns when a
huddle of frightened people come between them.
Shockingly, Johnny then mows them down.
The
slaughter of civilians in the hospital and the teahouse is not
merely cynical carnage. At
the time of the film's release Woo revealed 'Hard Boiled' was
his statement on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong.
The hospital is a metaphor for what he believed Hong
Kong would become in five years time, a place of crime and
open gang warfare where civilians would live and die in fear.
When Tequila and Teresa are spiriting the babies out of
the hospital, they are literally preserving the future of Hong
Kong. Thankfully,
this crimewave does not seem to have occurred and Hong Kong
actually has a very small number of firearms.
Thematically
rich, 'Hard Boiled's climax also stands as a masterpiece of
planning and execution. Woo,
ably assisted by action director Kwok (credited here as Cheung
Jue-Luh), delivers a brilliantly sustained sequence that
wracks up the tension and repeatedly outdoes itself.
All that Woo has given to action cinema is here: the
double Beretta leap through the air, the Mexican standoff, the
gleefully preposterous close quarter gunfire played as a dance
of death, thousands of squibs, the reflective pauses of the
two leads who yearn for an impossible new dawn.
The sheer exhilaration of this denouement plays havoc
with the audience, traversing a map of emotion from excitement
to tension to shock, and finally, as Tequila leaps from the
exploding building with baby in hands, utter elation.
The
cliché has become to describe Woo's action as balletic, but
music in 'Hard Boiled' is used in so many ways.
Beyond the dated though exciting main action theme
(that still works the same way 'The A-Team' theme does), Woo
casts Tequila as an accomplished musician, who makes music
with a clarinet as well as a handgun.
Tequila's bluesy playing often complements Tony's
tortured soul searching, and in another nice connection
between the two protagonists Tony also makes music, sending
his lieutenant (Chan) song lyrics containing hidden communiqués.
Tony sends these in bouquets of flowers and sharp eyed
viewers will notice Tequila holds a book about flowers when he
investigates Tony's hit near the beginning of the film.
The climax also begins when Teresa discovers the rose
in her pocket.
Is
'Hard Boiled' the perfect film then?
Of course not, those wanting flaws will find them: as
previously mentioned, Tequila is carried by Chow's immense
charisma, Tony's method of smuggling a gun into a hospital is
lifted from 'Terminator 2' (despite what other reports say to
the contrary; there are shots replicated from Cameron's film),
and a gunfight on Tony's boat seems to have been taken from
Michael Mann's pilot for 'Miami Vice'.
The film lacks a proper female role, Phillip Chan is
the ball-busting chief of a thousand cop movies, and some
audiences find the emotive force behind Woo's bullet festivals
overblown and off-putting.
But,
let the naysayers pick over the latest John Woo
disappointment, this is an unabashed love letter to Woo's most
accomplished directorial outing and his last truly great
hurrah for chivalry.
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