Hard Boiled (1992)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

What's there to be said about John Woo's Hard-Boiled that hasn't already been said? What else is there to say about John Woo in general? His over-the-top and strangely balletic approach to action has been highly influential in the action genre, spawning copycats and rip-offs the world over for decades. Even today, long after Woo's last stylized action extravaganza hit theaters, directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodrigeuz (to name the most obvious ones) still mimic Woo's kinetic approach.Hard-Boiled is Woo's last Hong Kong film before he emigrated to good ol' Hollywood, where his style was utilized with higher production values and restrictions Woo had never had to deal with before. Sure, he went back after a while, but things were never the same (or nearly as fun) after Hard-Boiled. His previous films, most of which starred Chow Yun-Fat, were all exercises in pretentious melodrama and frenetic gun violence.It has all led to this. Hard-Boiled, also starring Chow Yun-Fat, cranks down the melodrama a few notches and kicks the gun violence into high gear. It's darker and has less heart than Woo's previous films, but Woo will still find a way to film a tragic scene in blurry slow motion from multiple angles, and he'll be damned if he doesn't add in the obligatory reaction shot of an emotional onlooker. No matter what movie it is, or what actor, it's always the same look in the John Woo Obligatory Reaction Shot. With emotional jazz music. Don't forget the emotional jazz music.But we don't really watch John Woo's films for the silly melodrama, do we? No, not particularly. Woo's idea of drama is laughable and kind of childish. His dialogue is often just as stupid as his drama is over-the-top waterworks about loyalty and brotherhood and redemption and the like. The brotherly bonds Woo's protagonists share add to the overall appeal of his work and has been copied almost as often as his shootouts. In A Better Tomorrow, it was a cop brother dealing with the road his triad brother has taken--with Chow Yun-Fat kind of slapped in between them as the middle man who wants to keep them both together. A Better Tomorrow II was more of the same. The Killer was a hitman (also Chow) being pursued by and later becoming partners with a dedicated cop.This time, it's Chow playing an angry cop named Sergeant "Tequila" Yuen, eventually teaming up with a triad named Tony, played by Tony Leung, who may or may not be an undercover. Of course, that answer is obvious, though Woo tries to lead us astray at first. They're both caught on the same side and also opposite sides in a triple-threat death match between two warring gangs and the police. Poor Tony gets mixed up with all three at once. Sooner or later, he'll have to pick a side and betray the other two.Sound confusing? Not quite. It's one of those mixed bags where the film is executed in a more complicated fashion than the plot ought to allow. The plot is simplicity itself. Think if The Raid 2 was made in the early 1990's and had blazing guns instead of blurry fists and feet. A crazy gunrunner wants to expand his business and the cops don't want that. Plain and simple.Aside from some decent acting from Leung and Chow--Leung for his emotional performance as a man torn by multiple loyalties, and Chow as a jaded cop who struggles to maintain control of his rage--the only other things worth mentioning are the higher production values and Woo's fantastic gun battles, since the soundtrack is wonky and hard on the ears when it isn't a sad jazzy melody, and the dialogue is a borderline joke at times, both in Cantonese with an English subtitle option AND with an English dub track (the latter of which makes this even more fun to watch just for the unintentionally comedic values it brings).So why the 8/10 rating? I'll tell you why: Hard-Boiled knows what it is, and it is the best of both worlds. It's a dark, brooding crime saga and a highly stylized action feast with some good-natured dark humour and a surprising amount of camp sprinkled in for good measure. Sure, lots of films can get away with the argument that "they know what they are," but few are executed as well as Hard-Boiled was. Hard-Boiled is just a wide load of fun for everyone--or at least, every action fan who's tired of the sterile quick-cut-zoom-close-up saturation style that generally infects most Hollywood films. In this case, it's not the "why," but the "how" and the "what;" it's not the idea, but the execution of that idea. And Woo's execution of Hard-Boiled as a whole is both masterful and excessive. We're treated to wide shots, panning shots, and chaos in its most raw and balletic forms, and of course a two-minute continuous shot of our heroes rampaging through the corridors of a hospital swarming with flying cannon fodder. With Woo, no blank is spared, no explosive is abandoned, and not a single shot is wasted. And I mean EVERY shot--be it from a gun or a camera.As excessive as it is, it's quite amazing that Woo managed to film these things with multiple cameras without so much as a boom mike being present within the frame. He manages this throughout the film, which is two hours, six minutes in total--approximately an hour and a half of which accommodates one of its three major action setpieces (and a fourth brief one somewhere in the middle). Each setpiece is crazier than the one before it, and by the finale, which goes on for a whopping forty minutes; the actors were practically blowing each other up for real. In fact, Woo DID blow up Chow for real (or singed him, at least...) when he reset the explosives for the sole purpose of getting a more authentic reaction from poor Chow.This is basically The Wolf of Wall Street of action films minus the third hour, for both our sakes and, well, everyone else's. I don't think anyone could handle a third hour of this kind of mayhem--not even the best of us. We're out of breath by the second exhilarating hour. By the third, if such a thing existed, there would be nothing left of us but exhausted shells. Action fans looking for a quick fix would find themselves OD'ing three times in a single sitting on this.Is John Woo's Hard-Boiled worthy of being called an action classic alongside films like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon? It depends on who you ask. If you asked me, I would tell you the latter options have better characters and dialogue, but the former trumps both of them and several others combined for kinetic thrills and cartoonish mayhem.I wouldn't, however, take Hard-Boiled as seriously.

An undercover cop and hired hitman is in the middle of a Triad turf war .. and a trigger-happy cop is leading the investigation after his partner gets killed ..Rumor has it over 200 people were killed in this movie .. highly plausible

I was highly anticipating seeing this, one of John Woo's most acclaimed films. Having seen and loved HARD TARGET and FACE/OFF, I had heard about how good this film was, and I literally couldn't wait to see it after all the good words were said. Did it fulfil my expectations in the end? Hell, yes! The police procedural style plot will be familiar to anyone who's a fan of Hong Kong crime thrillers. We get an on-the-edge cop, and his murky world of villains, grasses, and untrustworthy allies. It's a simplistic plot in the extreme, averagely written, nothing much to set it aside from all the others. Chow Yun-Fat is good, yes, but he hardly sets the screen alight.And then comes the action. Starting off with a tea-house shoot-out, it ranges from massive showdowns in warehouses to the forty-five minute, hospital-set climax. During this time in which my opinion of the film completely changed. The hospital shoot-out has to be one of the best moments ever in an action film, it just goes on and on as criminal after criminal is shot, no, riddled with bullets, glass smashes, and literally loads of people die. Then the building gets set on fire, and babies are being rescued while Chow runs around shooting people with two guns in one of the longest, yet most consistently exciting action sequences ever filmed.I loved it. I hope, in the course of things, that I can discover more films which equal this kind of spectacle. Since I wrote the above comments I've rewatched HARD-BOILED a number of times and it's grown on me every time, offering perfectly shot action, full of excitement, highly stylised and never letting up on the violence and bloodshed. Tremendous, unsurpassable stuff.

Review: I remember thinking that this movie was amazing when I first watched it, in the early 90's, because of the great action at the end and the coolness of Chow Yun-Fat but I must admit, it does look a bit dated now. The soundtrack is awful throughout the movie and the gun action seemed a bit messy and over exaggerated. Anyway, this movie is about a Hong Kong cop, Officer "Tequila" Yuen (Chow Yun-Fat), who attempts to arrest a group of gun smugglers in a tea house with his partner, Benny (Bowie Lam). During an epic shootout, Benny is killed and many of the officers are badly wounded so Tequila goes on a mission to kill the gang who ambushed there operation. Whilst seeking revenge for his partner, Tequila sets out to kill the gangster who sent out his henchmen to ambush the deal but Tequila's boss, Pang (Philips Chan) wants the gangster alive so he can testify. While all of that commotion is happening, a high ranking assassin, Alan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), works for a triad boss, Uncle Hoi but when Alan is approached by a rival gang leader, Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong) to join his gang because of his impressive gun skills, Alan turns against Hoi and they plan to raid one of Hoi's warehouses. During the raid, Wongs henchmen kill most of Hoi's workers and he demands Alan to kill Wong who is called to the scene. Because of his loyalty to his new boss, Alan kills Hoi and he's left alone with his thoughts while Wong departs. Tequila watches the whole alteration and he attempts to kill Alan but he runs out of ammo and to his surprise, Alan spares his life. Tequila is then told by Pang, that Alan is an undercover officer so they join forces to take-down Wong, while he still is undercover. Tequila's informant, Foxy (Tung Wei) gets fatally injured by Wongs henchmen and Alan shoots Foxy to show his loyalty to Wong but he knows that the shot wouldn't kill him because he gave him a lighter, which he put in his breast pocket. Foxy then tells Tequila about the whole alteration and Tequila takes Foxy to the nearby hospital because of his fatal wounds. When Wong finds out that Foxy is still alive, he sends his henchmen to the hospital to kill Foxy but Alan and Tequila are there to protect him. Whilst fighting against Wongs henchmen, Tequila and Alan come across a secret passage which leads to Wongs arsenal, which they use to defend themselves. Wong then takes the patients and police officers hostage and after killing many of them, without any remorse, Pang and his officers get involved to try and free some of the babies in the maternity ward. Tequila helps to save the babies and the hostages while Alan goes head to head with Wongs head henchman. Wong then plants bombs around the hospital, so Tequila has to fight against time to save the last baby. When Wong starts to murder some more of the patients, his head henchman decides to turns his gun on Wong because he's against killing innocent people but he runs out of ammo and is killed by Wong on the spot. While the building is exploding, Wong comes out of the hospital, holding Alan at gunpoint and Wong tries to humiliate Tequila in front of all of his fellow officers but Alan isn't having any of it and he puts up a struggle with Wong and shoots himself through the belly, giving Tequila enough time to kill him. Once again, it's another detailed storyline with loads of bullets flying throughout the movie but the whole look and feel of the film was a bit dated. I really liked Chow Yun-Fat's character because of his no fear, one man army attitude but the gun action is a bit far fetched and I personally would have enjoyed it more, if it wasn't 2 hours long. Watchable!Round-Up: This movie was John Woo's last release in his native country before he hit the Western market with Hard Target with Jean Claude Van Damme. Its the last movie that he made with Chow Yun-Fat, after a successful run of movies together, which include A Better Tomorrow I & II, the Killer and Once A Thief and I hope they come together again, before Woo decides to retire. Anyway, the signature gun action from Woo is definitely what made this a hit in the early 90's but I was expecting more the second time around.Budget: $4.5million Worldwide Gross: HK$19.7millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their action/crime/drama's starring Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Teresa Mo and Philip Chan. 4/10