Hard Boiled
I watched what felt like a lot of John Woo in the late ’90s and early ’00s, but looking back now at the list it was pretty much just Face/Off, Broken Arrow and Mission: Impossible II. I opted not to go see Red Cliff when I was living in Japan, as it was in Mandarin with Japanese subtitles, so I figured I wouldn’t get that much out of it. It seems now he’s making “Peacock original” pictures, which feels like a step down, but he’s 79 years old so he probably doesn’t have to keep working. Regardless, I had never taken the trip back in time to his Hong Kong heyday.
Hard Boiled absolutely kicks ass. There’s a plot, yes. Chow Yun Fat is “Tequila”, a cop who plays by absolutely none of the rules and probably kills close to 100 people in this movie, and Tony Leung is a bad guy, but also an undercover cop. He breaks cover for no obvious reason, and the two team up to take down a notorious arms dealer named Johnny.
There’s a shootout in a restaurant full of birds (no doves). There’s a huge fight in a warehouse, with multiple motorbikes driving up ramps and exploding, with their real-person driver flying off in flames. The whole last hour is a huge fight in a hospital, that is somehow the arms dealer’s HQ, stacked with bad guys, also stacked with undercover cops, and also a maternity ward with dozens and dozens of newborn babies. The two leads have time to banter a bit amongst all the gunfights, despite how relentless they are, and are having a great time doing it. They shoot everyone and then the hospital blows up. It’s awesome.