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| ChowYun-fat in Hard-Boiled |
Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Teresa Mo, Philip Chan, Phillip Kwok, Anthony Wong, Kwan Hoi-san, Stephen Tung, Bowie Lam, Lo Meng, Bobby Au-yeung. Screenplay: John Woo, Barry Wong, Gordon Chan. Cinematography: Wang Wing-heng. Production design: James Leung. Film editing: John Woo, David Wu, Kai Kit-wai, Jack Ah. Music: Michael Gibbs.
About as much fun as you can have watching people die by the dozens. Don't get me wrong: I laughed out loud several times during John Woo's action masterpiece Hard-Boiled, as when Tequila's pants caught fire and the baby he was carrying peed and doused the flames. It's a rush of kinetic effects, and Chow Yun-fat as Yuen (aka Tequila) and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as Alan (or perhaps Ah Long, as the subtitles put it) have chemistry and charisma to spare. But once the dizzying, exhilarating action is over, you're not left with much beyond a pleasant buzz and in my case a nagging feeling that maybe you shouldn't really enjoy mindless violence so much. It's an "it's only a movie" movie that depends on your assurance that those are stuntmen firing fake guns and flinging themselves about and the blood is red stuff packed into squibs. Yet maybe, living as we Americans do in a gun culture, we ought to have an occasional afterthought about what we enjoy so much.