There are very few people who are into Hong Kong cinema, or even just
modern gun fighting action films, who have not heard of and seen John
Woo's Hard Boiled. If ever there was a film that deserved a big in
depth review, this is it. While I still absolutely loved the film, I'm
not going to give it that review, as they have been done to death - in
far more detail and depth than I could manage - on many other sites.
Chow Yun Fat and John Woo... together. When those two are involved in
the same film you are almost certain of a quality result. The both seem
to know what the other is looking for, and their style and
personalities (as far as the finished product goes) seem to compliment each other,
delivering the best you can possibly get. I believe this is, to date,
the highlight of their collaborative work. Others would say it is The
Killer, as it has lots of violent gunplay and possibly a better
story, but I say "Pah!!!" to that! I'm in it for nothing but the
unadulterated, pure, violent action.
Anyway, what story there is here goes something like this: Inspector
Yuen (Chow Yun Fat) swears to sweep out the gangsters and sometimes
breaks the rules in his furious drive to see justice done. An undercover cop
Tony (Leung Chiu Wai) has the same mission to fight an uphill war
against the triads. He painstakingly plays notorious games in order to show
faith to the underworld. Finally the two cops, both dedicated to the
same ends but have different working styles, have to join forces in their
ultimate battle against their maniac enemies.
Now the action... I'm not going to do a summary of all the different
action scenes in the film, as that is pointless, as writing and words
could never adequately describe the frenetic gunplay and action that you
see on the screen. What I will say though is that in most action films
there is mild action throughout, with some set pieces being slightly
larger in scale than others and then there is the one big action sequence,
which is the main action highlight of the film. This is not the case
with Hard Boiled. Every one of the many big action set pieces is
of as large a scale in quality and action as most other films' main
event. Guns are fired incessantly, people are killed left, right and centre
all the time (don't even try to keep track of the body count, you'll
run out of fingers way too quickly), explosion bombard the sense, lights
flash and people dive around trying to keep themselves alive. And
throughout it all one thing is a certainty - Chow Yun Fat looks damn cool
doing it!
It is not often that you can say Tony Leung Chiu Wai is upstaged in a
film, but he certainly is here. Granted drama is most probably his
forte, but action appears to Chow Yun Fat's. He is fearless in taking on
tens or hundreds of bad guy drones, and the cool and charisma that oozes
from him while he does it is enviable! The amount of bad guy drones that
are killed in the film does make me question some elements, though.
Just how big is the bad guy's organisation that he can seemingly have
limitless drones to help him out? After all the massacres that take place
early on in the film, why would any of the bad guy drones stay? I know,
loyalty and honour among thieves and all that, but still, I'd certainly
put my life as a higher priority!
Anyway, Hard Boiled is the bullet ballet, gunplay fans' wet
dream of a film. You simply will not see more gun fighting violence, with
action choreography as good as this any time soon.
