Rating: 3.5 on 4 /
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Tag Line: As a cop, he has brains, brawn, and an instinct to kill.
Directed by John Woo
Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung , Teresa Mo
THE
PLAN: A badass cop teams up with an undercover cop posing as an arms dealer to take down an evil mobster in Hong Kong.
THE KILL: When I think of some of the top action movie directors of all time, I think of the likes of John McTiernen, James Cameron, Renny Harlin, and the great John Woo. Woo in particular seemed to revolutionize the action genre with his directorial style, depicting heroes shooting two guns at once and a ton of slow motion. While he’s made a few Hollywood films, he made his mark in Hong Kong first, and HARD BOILED is one of the first signs of his greatness.
Starring international action star Chow Yun-Fat, HARD BOILED is the quintessential example of Woo’s directorial greatness. It’s also a movie that features one of the highest body counts in cinematic history, I shit you not. I’m not talking deaths by bombs or explosions (although there are a few contributed to those as well), I’m talking deaths by gunshot wounds. From the beginning Tea House shoot-out to the Hospital grand finale, HARD BOILED rolls hard when it comes to blowing people away.
Ever try and take a shit sitting sideways? It’s intense!!!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Yun-Fat stars as Tequila, a cop on the streets of Hong Kong who’s becoming increasingly more hostile, with every bust involving a clearance sale on body bags. He’s so hard that he’s actually…. hard boiled (hence the name). There’s something just so damn likable about Yun-Fat that it’s hard to pinpoint it exactly. He has charm, he has character, and you probably wouldn’t think of him as a big action star, at least by Hollywood’s standards. He doesn’t appear to have a hard edge to him, he’s not a bulking mass of a man, and the guy can believably pull off showing emotion (he can also blow a jazzy tune). He’s the anti-Schwarzenegger in that regard. What he can do, however, is bust out an arsenal of blazing firepower like it’s nobody’s business, and skillfully blow away the population of a small village. He’s that badass.
Tony Leung stars as the special agent working under deep cover within the mob. The dude has some acting skills, as it’s apparent his character has some emotional conflicts to deal with, whether he’s running guns or blowing away his collegues, the guy has to do some pretty hardcore shit to stay undercover. The rest of the cast does their job adequately enough, including Anthony Wong as Johnny Wong, the main evil mofo, and Cheng Jue-Luh as the notorious Mad Dog aka Johnny Wong’s number one hitman. This dude reminded me of Schwarzenegger from THE TERMINATOR with a splash of the Night Stalker from COBRA.
Just think how weird this would be if this gun was actually my dick right now. Weird, huh?
Let’s dive into the action, baby! There’s a shitload of it in HARD BOILED, and it doesn’t get much better, bloodier, or more hard-core than this! Woo shows off his skill of filming well choreographed gun-fights where the mix of bodies flying and guns firing becomes almost ballet-like in their execution. Every sequence is thought out, and masterful in its ridiculousness. That’s right, I said ridiculousness. There’s a reason why the film has been slapped with an X rating in a number of countries. Not only do a ton of people get shot to death, but each of those shots is bloodier than you’d see in your average Hollywood action flick! That’s right, not only is the body count huge, but each death is bloody as hell! Think of the bloodiness of TOTAL RECALL and ROBOCOP, and then times the body count by 200 and you have the kick-assness of HARD BOILED.
Woo seriously injures his heroes during shootouts with some of the bloodiest, yet survivable, gunshot wounds ever. Leung will get shot in the shoulder and next thing you know he’s covered in his own blood, yet he’s still running around and blowing bad guys away. And when I say blowing bad guys away, I really mean it! The sequences at the Tea Room, the warehouse, and the climatic ending at the hospital has a ton of indispensable bad guys happy to fall by gunfire thus ever-increasing the film’s overall body count. Where the hell are all these bad guys coming from? I know Hong Kong is a big city, but this shit gets ridiculous… in a totally awesome way. You’ll never get board or wish Tequila shot more dudes because if there’s ever a dull moment, it’s quickly interrupted by some random thug gettin shot at point blank range.
Come with me if you want to live.
The level of action violence in HARD BOILED puts Hollywood to shame. There’s hard core, then there’s HARD BOILED, a movie that fits the bill as an action extravaganza with so many people meeting their bloody demise by gunfire or flying through broken windows, that you won’t believe your eyes. Chow Yun-Fat puts Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, and even Schwarzenegger and Stallone to shame. While he might not look it, he definitely earned his title of International Action Star here, so much so that you’ll probably smirk next time you see him in one of those family-friendly PIRATE movies. The films final half hour, set in the secret mob hideout in the basement of a fully-functional hospital, is one not to be missed. The body count rises substantially, including the slaughter of hospital patients at the hands of the mob. These guys really don’t give a f*ck who they blow away, making it all that sweeter when they’re blown to smithereens. This sequence also features the extraction of room full of new born babies before the bomb goes off. Films like SHOOT ‘EM UP might have featured a gun fight while the hero is holding a baby, but HARD BOILED practically invented that shit.
At the end of the day, you gotta ask yourself what you’re looking for in an action movie. A high body count? Cool death sequences? A shitload of gunfights? A hero who doesn’t give a f*ck? Bad guys flying through an endless amount of glass? Then HARD BOILED is for your. Sadly the film doesn’t feature any random naked chicks,, and there’s not a single car chase to be seen (I always like a good car chase), but that can be overlooked by the sheer spectacle of seeing Tequila bust out two hand guns and masterfully shoot thugs at point blank range. Woo created his legacy with HARD BOILED, and set the bar as to what all Hong Kong and Hollywood action movies should be like.
TOP DEATH: The body count’s so high that it’s hard to pick just one, but the one that stood out for me was when Tequila’s girlfriend slaps in the face, the thug then calls her bitch, so she whips out a hand cannon and blows him away. Nice work!
TOP ACTION SCENE: Where’s one sequence in the hospital near the end that’s amazing, simply because it’s one single shot that lasts for almost 3 minutes. In that 3 minutes, a shitload of people are shot to death, blown through windows, and there’s even an elevator ride to a different level to switch things up a bit. It’s a scene that will go down in the record books, and you can check out the awesomeness of it all below to relieve the magic.
This is so John Woo right now.
TOP HOMOEROTIC MOMENT: This is Hong Kong, not Hollywood, so don’t expect much in this department.
FEMALE EXPLOITATION: Unfortunately all we get is Tequila’s lady cop girlfiend and she doesn’t show nothing off. Where’s the strippers, where’s the random hookers, where’s the T&A? I guess there was too much gun violence to allow room for any of that.
TOP LINE/DIALOGUE:
Tequila: You’re full of shit, you know that? There’s a toilet over there.
Johnny Wong: Everything goes in and out of style, except war.
No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t make Chow Yun Fat white.
DRINKING GAME: Drink every time someone flies through a window. Make it a double if it’s done in slow motion.
TRIVIA:
HARD BOILED surprisingly only cost $4M to make.
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