i want you to hit me as hard as you can
hey everybody and welcome back to another edition of the best movie you never saw
and this week we're taking a look at a movie that i'm sure a lot of you in fact
have seen called hard-boiled directed by john woo and starring chow yun fat and tony leung now
i know this one is going to get me into a bit of trouble because everybody's going to tell me
chris this is a classic this is not a best movie you never saw because we all saw it if only that
were true the thing about hard-boiled is that yes to a generation i'm sure that it is a classic but
i'm also sure that there are many of our viewers out there that have never seen a john woo movie
that's not in english just is what it is so if you do want to dig into an absolutely amazing chapter
in action cinema basically what was going on in the 1980s and 1990s in hong kong the best place
to start is with one of john woo's classic movies like the killer or this week's entry hard-boiled
so in it his iconic leading man Chow Yun-fat plays a hong kong inspector named tequila who's trying
to take down an army of gangsters led by anthony wong's character he runs afoul of a high-ranking
triad assassin played by tony leung chui wai who of course turns out to actually be an undercover
cop who's deep deep deep deep deep deep deep undercover the two of them eventually team up
in an explosive finale set at a hospital that goes on for something like 40 minutes and stands as one
of the greatest action sequences ever directed john woo was at an interesting place when this
movie came out he had blasted onto the scene in hong kong with a better tomorrow which was a movie
that established the heroic bloodshed genre the heroic bloodshed genre basically took the tropes
of kung fu cinema but replaced them with gun play it was something completely new for the
era because you know hong kong movies for better or worse were always seen as kind of kung fu
movies which of course they weren't all kung fu movies but that was what exported the best
when they started doing these heroic legend movies with gun play the movie started to export as well
never quite as big as some of the bruce lee or jackie chan movies but quite well nonetheless
now of this genre the undisputed king was cha young fat and he was established as such
by a better tomorrow which cast him as a triad assassin named mark gore Chow Yun fat in the
film actually only played a supporting part and his character was killed off at the end but he
was so popular that they built a sequel around his character's twin brother which was called a
better tomorrow too again directed by john woo in an even bigger hit than the first movie although
apparently the production was fraught and in fact the movie is a bit of a mess but it has some
absolutely amazing action set pieces including a great finale where Chow Yun-fat and his opponent
pump bullets into each other and exchange pistols which is actually exerted in true romance because
quentin tarantino was a huge fan of this movie after a better tomorrow one and two john woo was
at the top of his game and definitely established a major international reputation with the release
of the killer which cast chow yun-fat as a smooth talking assassin very much in the mould of Alain
Delon from the samurai in this movie once again he's partnered with a tough cop played by danny
lee to take down some triad gangsters after he accidentally blinds the singer it's a terrific
movie and really did establish Chow Yun-fat's persona as kind of the tragic hero with them
wearing these beautiful suits and engaging in a ton of gunplay throughout and of course in
this one he was the star he was not a supporting character he was the leading man now surprisingly
the killer while successful in hong kong was not maybe as successful as everybody thinks
internationally it was one of john who's most acclaimed films and probably one of his most
famous but it was more of a hit internationally than it was domestically after that john wu kind
of went crazy he directed a movie called bullet in the head which was i think a masterpiece but
was a film that was very difficult to make john wu in interviews actually said that it was his
reaction to the tiananmen square massacre and even called it his own version of apocalypse
now meaning that it had the same personal toll on him as apocalypse now had on francis ford
Coppola. Chow Yun-fat didn't start in this movie but tony long did and simon yam ,played a very
similar character it's a really cool movie kind of obscure these days but too bad because it is
really one of his masterpieces but another movie that was kind of difficult to make and there's
many different versions of the movie out there some of them end in a great car chase others
end a very kind of dramatic moment where the hero just cold-bloodly assassinates the villain it's a
tough movie to track down but a really good one so after this Chow Yun-fat and john woo re-teamed on
a movie called once a thief which teamed them with leslie cheung who was a huge star at the time and
unfortunately took his own life several years later once a thief is very different from the
usual john woo movie it had lots of action but also had heavy doses of comedy which was something
that Chow Yun-fat was actually becoming quite known for at the time as big as his action movies
were he was also a much in demand leading man in terms of romance and comedy and some of his most
successful movies such as god of gamblers really mixed the two genres together god of gamblers is a
particularly strange movie because it's like rain man meets john woo it's a very very strange film
so once a thief was a big hit and they decided to reteam on hard boiled but one of the issues about
their other movies together was that critics had said that they were glamorizing triads and sure
enough they were glamorizing triads which was kind of the hong kong version of the mafia so
in this one john woo decided to make his leading man a cop a tough cop who does play by the rules
named tequila basically hong kong's answer to dirty harry so in this one Chow Yun-fat
would drop the cool suits not really wear sunglasses and then just dress like kind of a
working-class cop he did however keep some of his trademarks such as the two-fisted pistol packing
and if john woo's movies up to this point had been action-packed hard-boiled dwarfs
any of those by comparison just the opening tea house shootout itself would be the climax to most
movies but is only the introduction here i mean it's an insane movie and i remember seeing it
on the canadian version of hbo first choice as a kid and i remember just thinking oh i'd
watch the beginning of this movie because i knew that john woo had gone on to direct hard target a
movie that i thought was pretty cool at the time but i wasn't much interested in foreign films
however the opening tea house shootout in this movie blew me away and i remember telling all my
friends about it who were also into action movies and trying to get them to watch it with me i mean
guys come on you like action this movie is action like super action non-stop from beginning to end
but it'll last for a while my love of john woo and hong kong action movies was a bit one might
say niche so hard-boiled if you've seen it is absolutely an undisputed classic of the action
genre and Chow Yun-fat is terrific as tequila the cop hero tony leung chiu wai however who at the
time was becoming more and more popular thanks to his movies with wong kar wai and was kind of the
pre-eminent romantic lead in hong kong was also really good as the undercover cop that
he befriends tony lang at the time was actually already john woo's kind of second favorite leading
man with him having played the lead in bullet and head he would later famously play the lead
in red cliff after Chow Yun-fat stepped down in a much publicized incident so why is this
movie so good i mean why not it's just non-stop action it's about two hours and 10 minutes long
it's very stylish for a hong kong movie beautiful neon lit photography and some of the best action
scenes you've ever seen like i said the opening tea house action scene would be a good enough
finale in any other movie but it's only the introduction here there's another really great
warehouse shootout about halfway through the film which blew my socks off when i was a kid but then
what's even better is the ending 40 minutes where all the characters just kind of come together
and start whacking each other and killing each other off and it's chaotic but amazing
so many of the parts in this movie are great theresa mo plays kind of Chow Yun-fat's love
interest she has a really good scene where she's trying to protect babies in a hospital
blows away a triad assassin there's a guy named mad dog in the film who's kind of the skilled
gunfighter that works for the main villain in the movie johnny wong played by anthony wong
philip kwok played this guy and he was a famous martial arts choreographer at the time and at the
end of the movie he suddenly becomes a good guy when johnny wong starts mowing down some innocent
civilians it's a really cool scene anthony wong typically played villains in all these movies
at the time but odd enough is dubbed in this film because i don't think john woo and him really got
along it's too bad because anthony wong really is one of the better actors of his generation
Chow Yun-fat has never been cooler than he is here especially at the end of the movie where he's
running around with a baby in his arm and shooting bad guys at one point his leg gets set in fire
and the baby actually puts out the fire with his urine now this would kind of be a silly scene in
any other movie but john wu makes it operatic and these guys are just like throwing around
babies like footballs and shooting each other it's pretty amazing but i couldn't see them
ever doing anything like it in american movie so like a lot of john woo's other movies hard boiled
was successful in hong kong but not as successful as one might think however it played midnight
madness at the toronto international film festival and the audiences just went berserk for it we're
stomping their feet and cheering and this is really what led to John Woo becoming such an
in-demand director internationally with him then going on to direct hard target with van damme and
then broken arrow with john travolta and christian slater which was a big hit and then finally his
kind of opus in north america face-off starring john Travolta and nicolas cage he would eventually
direct mission impossible 2 starring tom cruise and would eventually be considered one of the most
bankable action directors of his era his career petered out a little bit around the mid-2000s
with movies like wind talkers and paycheck and he eventually went back to china where his output
has definitely been decidedly mixed the red cliff films are great the crossing films are
not and he recently did a return to heroic bloodshed with this movie called manhunt which
has its moments but is also very very bad at certain points it's on netflix now and one of
the things i think that the movie suffers from is that doesn't have a really strong leading
man like Chow Yun-fat john woo and china but never worked together again after this movie
and it's really a shame they did kind of work together where john woo apparently came in to
reshoot the last gunfight in a Chow Yun-fat movie called peace hotel and he actually produced a
couple of his early american starring vehicles but the two fell out after red cliff i think the
two do have some differences both personally and perhaps even politically now che and fat
has always been one of my favorite leading men and when i was younger i really did get into a
lot of these hong kong movies i used to go to chinatown to pick up vcds which were kind of
a weird format that existed only in asia never really came over here but you could actually
play them in your playstation one if you had one and also on your computer you know there are a
couple of really cool chai and fat movies that i thought i would recommend you guys if you're not
overly concerned with pc you should definitely check out the movie god of gamblers although
at one point the movie Chow Yun-fat's character gets hit on the head and has the mind of a child
and it's not necessarily the most enlightened depiction of the mentally challenged i've ever
seen but it's kind of a fun movie the sequel god of gambler's return has a really good opening but
otherwise it's kind of dull tagger on the beat is a really fun one and it has a really good
chainsaw fight at the end with conan lee who kind of disappeared from martial arts action cinema at
some point too bad another classic of course is full contact with Chow Yun-fat acting for his one
of his other favorite directors in hong kong ringo lam who unfortunately died recently it's a really
amazing movie that has these great bullet's eye pov shots he did a couple other really
cool movies for ringo lam including city on fire which was essentially remade as reservoir dogs
and the prison on fire series his american output has been mixed i would say the replacement killers
is really stylish fun movie and i really enjoyed his follow-up to that the corrupter which cast him
opposite mark wahlberg in this kind of crime drama directed by james foley i think those two movies
are great but i was never a huge fan of crouching tag or hidden dragon and and the king was okay and
he was fine in the pirates of the caribbean three movie but otherwise Chow Yun-fat's career i think
has kind of petered out so much which is really too bad although i think he's kind of happily
quasi-retired i do hope he makes a huge comeback at some point though because he still looks pretty
good even though he's like 66 years old i would really love to see him do another movie with john
wu because i think the two of them together are just electric and hopefully whatever differences
they have if they do indeed have any differences can be put aside but if you want to see these two
guys at their absolute best check out hard boiled it's one of my favorite hong kong action movies
of all time and something of a masterpiece i highly recommend it if you haven't seen it
because it really is the best movie you never saw and if you like this kind of content make
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