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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