Hard Boiled

Well, it's been a roller coaster ride, but we've safely reached the end of John Woo Month, and as with my other special months, I've saved the best till last. You thought the previous 3 films were off the chain, well they have nothing on this one. Not just one of Woo's best action films, but one of the best action films in general. It's the moment you've been waiting for, so I'm going to save you the suspense. This, is Hard Boiled.

Released in 1992, Woo's final Hong Kong film before transferring to Hollywood, and starring screen legend Chow Yun-Fat alongside Tony Yeung and Anthony Wong, Hard Boiled follows a Hong Kong cop and his vendetta against a local crime syndicate. If you combine all of the violence perpetrated in the other films I've looked at this month, it wouldn't amount to half the carnage we see in this one. Are you ready? I sure hope so, cos we're diving right in.

This action-packed movie opens, like all actions-packed movies do, in a tea shop. Here we come across our hero, Inspector Yeun a.k.a., Tequila, and his partner, who are attempting to bust a group of drug smugglers. Unfortunately, things don't go smoothly, and during an epic gun fight Tequila's partner is killed. Slightly peeved by this, Tequila becomes determined to take down the gang to avenge his fallen comrade.

We discover that a crime syndicate run by a man named Johnny Wong (Wong, surprisingly) is keen to recruit Triad rookie Tony (Yeung). After another epic gunfight at an arms warehouse, Tony turns against his former employer and joins Wong's gang. During the battle, Tequila and Tony meet for the first time.

After discovering that Tony is an undercover Cop, Tequila decides to secretly team up with him and locate the site of Wong's hidden arsenal before he can reek all kinds of havoc with it. This results in, of course, several more epic gunfights.

Remember last year when I reviewed Plan 9 From Outer Space, and how I said I laughed at it more than I had laughed at some actual comedies, well the same applies here. This is one of the most gratuitously violent and chaotic movies I've ever seen. The action scenes are protracted, the story is non-nonsensical, 90% of the characters are just there to die, and it stretches the audience's suspense of disbelieve to breaking point; and I absolutely love it. By far my favourite Woo movie. It's the excessiveness that makes it so watchable, I roll over laughing at it everytime. It's a sheer delight to witness destruction on such an unbelievable level, and evokes a kind of desire to be in such as situation yourself, gunning down a million bad guys left, right and centre; making everything explode simply by firing a gun that, mysteriously, you never seem to have to reload. You know those video game cheat codes that gave you unlimited ammunition, and how every gunfighter in movie history seemed to have that luxury in an intense situation? Well on the DVD case is a quote which informs us that Tequila 'never reloads and never misses'. Oh yes, this movie acknowledges the fact that our protagonist will never run out of bullets. How cool is that?

Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed John Woo Month, and now you have a chance to relax and let the dust settle. As always, normal service resumed next week.