With more than 15 years making a name for himself in his native Hong Kong with classics like A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled (my pick for the best action movie ever), it was really only a matter of time before John Woo broke the mold and emerged in Hollywood. And that’s just what he did, finding it to be a culture shock, albeit a mostly welcome one.
John Woo sat down with Variety recently for a wide-ranging conversation on his Hong Kong days, the transition to Hollywood and everything thereafter (including a movie that bridges the move, a remake of his own The Killer). As far as moving to the States, Woo said, “What surprised me was how it got such a warm welcome from the Western world…The biggest reason I came to Hollywood was because I wanted to learn something new. At the same time, I tried to prove my style could also work in a Hollywood movie.”
Woo’s first Hollywood movie would be 1993’s Hard Target, which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, fresh off of his own run of Kickboxer, Double Impact and Nowhere to Run. But JCVD — who, like Woo, was broadening his appeal by emigrating to the U.S.. — wasn’t going to make it easy. That included trying to cut the movie himself, overstepping his boundary to the point where producer James Jacks and Sam Raimi — brought in by Universal to keep an eye on production for the “first-timer” — had to remove JCVD from the editing room. As Woo noted, “The studio and the big star had so much control. They have final approval of the script and the supporting roles. But in Hong Kong, the director is everything.”
John Woo would find an audience pretty much immediately after transitioning to Hollywood, directing John Travolta and Christian Slayer in 1996’s Broken Arrow, Travolta and Nicolas Cage in 1997’s Face/Off and Tom Cruise in the first Mission: Impossible sequel in 2000.
What do you think is John Woo’s best Hollywood movie? What about from Hong Kong? Give us your top picks in the comments section below!
