HARD-BOILED Movie Review

Lashou Shentan

You can say that again. Hong Kong action ace John Woo has designed a complex conspiracy of illegal arms traffic and international corruption just so that a pair of renegade cops (Tony Leung and sullen, legendary action star Chow Yun-Fat) can team to wipe them off the map—in style. The action sequences in Woo's films are not gratuitous—they're the reason that his movies exist. There's a joy in the balletic choreography and two-gun orgasmic score-settling that Woo stages in his films, and he's brilliant at straddling the line between violent excess and the beloved conventions of the genre. The big, final shoot-out in Hard-Boiled revels in the unthinkable—the whole sequence is staged in a hospital ward packed with crying newborns, all endangered by the thousand of flying bullets. Since everything we know about Chow Yun-Fat's character (and Woo's) tells us that he'll never let a single baby come to harm, we can relax and enjoy the spectacle for its sheer exhilarating audacity. If you're going to see a movie—any movie—in which the ostensible subject is male bonding, then it might as well be one that's as excitingly, hilariously enjoyable as Hard-Boiled.

NEXT STOP … A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Face/Off

1992 126m/C HK Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung, Philip Chan, Anthony Wong, Teresa Mo; D:John Woo; W:John Woo, Barry Wong; C:Wing-Heng Wang; M:Michael Gibbs. VHS ORI, FCT