The Rouge Cop and the Undercover Cop up against some gangster motherfuckers in John Woo's blueprint on how to make the motherfucker of all motherfuckin' action movies. The Jazz Club. The paperboy. The fuckin' birds at the teahouse. The first time Tequila shoots 2 guns at once. Automatic fuckin' weapons. Staircase ownage. Tequila's toothpick. White as a ghost. A chat with JW. High-tech computers. The last book your fuckin' ass will ever read. Pretty-pretty-oh-so-fuckin'-pretty flowers. Never trust an icky eel. Anthony Wong's hair. Fishin'. The impossible question: Who's a badder badass motherfucker; Mad Dog from Hard Boiled or Mad Dog from The Raid? Motorcycle madness. A grand fuckin' entrance. A Zippo. Paper cranes. Fun on a boat. Fuckin' Foxy. Mad…

"it happened so quickly... it was like a dream"

my favorite woo simply because it takes his sense of empathy to the forefront, and places it in direct opposition with his action. like mann, woo is a filmmaker of romance and moral codes on both sides of the law, of people that yearn for love and connection, trapped by institutions that swallow them. their jobs, their actions, their sense of 'right' and 'wrong' reduced to an infinitely layered blur of bodies, objects and movement in a perpetual state of collapse—it's abstract extravagance. there's an inherent romance to it, not just for the characters whose only means of expression it is, but for the audience too, and woo doesn't even pretend…

An absolutely ballistic, no-holds-barred, over-the-top yet purely unadulterated action extravaganza to come out from Hong Kong during the the early 90s, Hard Boiled raises the bar for action in cinema with its heart-pounding & jaw-dropping sequences and cements John Woo's reputation as the most influential director when it comes to action filmmaking.

The story of Hard Boiled concerns two ace cops; one is a tough-as-nails detective in his department while the other one works as an undercover agent and has risen sharply in the underworld over the years. The plot covers their initial friction with each other followed by a mutual partnership as the two eventually team up to take down & wipe out Hong Kong's most ruthless mobster & his crime syndicate.…

A catalogue of every image, theme and move John Woo had made his own in the previous five years blow up to an extreme beyond even his usual outsized melodramatics. Written as it was been filmed (when Tony Leung amazing introduction was shot he was supposed to be an actual psychotic killer) it remain coherent and surprising emotional effective thanks to how focused Woo’s images are. The film is predicted in a motif of collateral damage, unlike The Killer there is always an innocent around ready to be shot and even our heroes can’t do nothing but occasionally hit the wrong target. A place of healing is turned into an war zone between a whole inefficient government (who does more…

From the opening scene of the rain covered, neon-lit streets of the city, superimposed over Chow Yun-Fat sweating, drinking a slammer and playing clarinet in a dark jazz club, we can see that this film matches its title perfectly. This is a Hard-Boiled police story in the grand tradition of Harry Callaghan, Popeye Doyle and Frank Bullitt. Everything is black and white, the hero does what needs to be done to save the day and if the brass at City Hall don't like it they can swivel. In fact Chow Yun-Fat's character, Tequila Yuen, seems to contain every cop cliché there is: matchstick chewing renegade cop, putting himself in the mind of the killer, eating around dead bodies. That's okay…