Hard Boiled is an action fan’s buffet table.
Take a watch, and you’ll dine on:
- rocket launchers
- piles of shattered glass
- open warehouse shootouts
- hospital shootouts
- restaurant shootouts
- vehicles crashing
- burning barrels
- twisted villain plots
- one-eyed assassins
And the house special: helpless babies in need of rescue.
After years of depicting glamorized gangsters, vaunted action director John Woo turned the style spotlight onto the police.
Drawing inspiration from characters like Steve McQueen’s Bulitt and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, Woo popped out Tequila: a jazz musician and gunslinging, jaded hero cop.
To realize Woo’s “hard-boiled” detective, he again teamed up with Hong Kong film legend Chow Yun-fat.
And this time he paired Yun-fat with arguably the most acclaimed actor in Chinese history, Tony Leung.
Hard Boiled did good business at the Hong Kong box office. But despite this talent behind and in front of the camera, it wasn’t Woo’s biggest earner.
Yet the movie may be his most heralded overseas effort in the West.
Several critics called it the best action ever filmed on screen. And considering this is a post-Die Hard and Terminator 2 world, that’s quite the praise shower.
So is Hard Boiled a good movie?
The Plot of Hard Boiled:
After Inspector “Tequila” Yuen Ho-yan (Chow Yun-fat) loses a partner in a shootout with gun smugglers, he works to track them down.
Along the way, he clashes with his girlfriend, fellow officer Teresa Chang (Teresa Mo), and his supervisor, Superintendent Pang (Philip Chan).
As Tequila’s investigation continues, he teams up with Alan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a deep undercover cop posing as a triad assassin.
Can new partners Tequila and Alan take down arms dealer Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong)?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- Philip Kwok as Mad Dog
- Bowie Lam as Benny Mak
- Anjo Leung as Benny’s son
- Bobby Au-yeung as Lionheart
- Kwan Hoi-san as “Uncle” Hoi
- Stephen Tung as Foxy
- John Woo as Bartender
- Jun Kunimura as Tea-House Gunman
You can watch a trailer here on IMDB.
What’s Working Well Here:
Action Stuffed, +10 Points
After the manic, kitchen sink of gun-fu climax that caps A Better Tomorrow II, you wouldn’t expect Woo to have more action gears to hit.
But like 90s Pizza Hut cramming even more fatty cheese into their pies by unleashing Stuffed Crust Pizza, John Woo packs plenty a gun fighting in this 128-minute runtime.
Take the opening Tea House shootout.
With debris flying everywhere, Tequila acrobatically dispatches gangsters, leaping through the air or sliding down the rails, two pistols in hand.
Birds clanking around in cages, diners fleeing in all directions, Tequila is the only thing on screen not in a state of panic.
You look at the lights above in this warehouse shootout scene; it’s like we’ve entered a concert venue for a balletic bloodbath.
And it’s a two-for-one show. First, Johnny Wong’s men raid Hoi’s warehouse by motorbike, performing cycle stunts and machine-gunning hundreds of workers. And when that carnage has burned out, Tequila pops up to start blowing shit up again, ambushing Wong’s men.
Then there’s the legendary hospital sequence. The film’s finale is a sprawling tour of hallway gunfighting that clocks in at a staggering 37 minutes.
As Alan and Tequila dive and roll on gurneys or blast around corners, there’s debris from shattered windows and concrete pillars, thugs blasted through layers of glass.
Among many highlights, the standout is a one-shot, ~five-minute sequence where the camera follows the two heroes as they clear a floor of Johnny’s men, reload in an elevator, and waste another floor full of baddies.
Fun fact: The scene was done in one shot, not just for the exhilarating artistry but also because the crew was exhausted, which saved time.
Shot over 120 days, Woo choreographs the film’s intoxicatingly watchable violence as carefully as a sculpture made from matchsticks.
Buddy Cops but not a Buddy-Cop Vehicle, +4 Points
While the late 80s and early 90s American police films were in lockstep with the patented “buddy-cop” genre (48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon), a refreshing style is at work here.
There’s teasing between Alan and Tequila. But it’s not a purposefully formulaic abrasive pairing – say, a cop who plays by the rules with one who abandons them or a criminal who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty with a cop who does it by the book.
Instead, both Alan and Tequila struggle.
Alan is haunted by the awful murders and betrayals that are part of posing as an assassin. He makes a paper crane for every person he kills – and he’s got a literal boatful of paper cranes.
And Tequila, who has lost his partner and unknowingly gunned down an undercover cop, feels plenty of guilt while trying to do right. His romance with Teresa is stalling, and he often seeks advice from a retired police officer, now bartender (Woo in a cameo).
The two gain mutual respect in a different, winning formula.
Fiery Performances, +2 Points
With a team-up of Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung, two of Hong Kong’s most acclaimed actors, the chemistry is fun to see.
The pair form a camaraderie of anything you can do with a weapon I can also do and play well off each other in comedic and dramatic moments.
Anthony Wong is steadfast as nihilistic arms dealer Johnny Wong. And Philip Kwok’s Mad Dog, a one-eyed assassin, carries a cold and deadly calm.
Rock a Bye Baby, There’s a Gun Blast, +3 Points
**Spoilers Here**
The film makes you want to shout like Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze because, at the film’s end, there are babies everywhere.
Even this version of the film’s poster, Tequila with shotgun and baby in hand, hints that this film is secretly about tykes – and there’s an odd reason it got here.
Originally the Alan character was an evil villain with a madcap plot of poisoning infants. When connections were being made to bring John Woo in to make American films, people were “…disgusted with the theme of babies being poisoned.”
Changes were made. Alan was rewritten into an undercover officer, and thankfully this baby-killing idea was scrapped.
But the infants didn’t leave the film: they just get rescued instead of murdered (a good change).
As police forces scramble to evacuate the hospital patients in the finale, a side game emerges when about 30 newborns left behind in the well-baby nursery need saving.
And we’re talking bags of drama here. With her pistol, Teresa guards the infants from harm like a mother hen. SWAT-like officers repel down the sides of the hospital, baby baskets in hand, trying not to drop them as they trade fire with crazy thugs.
Then it culminates in my favorite sequence of the movie. With the last baby underarm, Tequila calms the child with an improvised nursery rhyme as he dispatches criminals. Then he runs away from an explosion, precious cargo held tight and a ball of fire ready to devour him.
This baby drama could trash the tone in another film. But when your villain is crazy enough to concoct a sophisticated scheme to hide a weapons cache in a hospital, it’s another odd but delightful turn in the film’s hysteria.
What’s Not Working So Well Here:
Mass Collateral Damage, -2 Points
Many doctors, nurses, patients, restaurant goers, and more innocent people I probably forgot get shot and killed on screen.
A few cops die, with the main characters feeling like or totally being responsible for their deaths.
And strangely only one of Johnny Wong’s men has any crisis of conscience about machine-gunning fleeing hospital staff and patients in the back.
This collateral damage is part of Hard Boiled’s edginess.
And it’s certainly a change up, as instead of just being able to sit back and enjoy every aspect of this film’s over-the-top gloriousness, knowing your heroes will save the day… you’re not quite sure. There’s a darker side to the fiery chaos that challenges the audience.
Still, while other viewers may disagree and call me a squeamish one, I was put off by all the bystanders shot down.
At the very least, all this unintentional bloodshed certainly calls into question the methods of the film’s police.
Go Watch Hard Boiled
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 17 Points
Even in the 2020s, Hard Boiled is a must-see for action fans worldwide.
The last team-up of Chow Yun-fat and John Woo (so far), the film triples down on the action sequences, which unfold in breathtaking style.
Yet for all its artistic violence, there are strong characters to pin the film to, in heavy thanks to its cast.
The film avoids the buddy cop trope, opting for darker themes of guilt and honor to unite its heroes.
And if I can’t sell you on anything else, two words: babies and shotguns.
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
