Now I know there's a whole bunch of John Woo heroic bloodshed movies and you're all desperate to make your case for BULLET IN THE HEAD or A BETTER TOMORROW but the reason I'm putting these two head to head is because they're regarded as Woo's iconic works, and because they're my favourite films which I watched on Blu yesterday.
It strikes me that despite both being action movies made by the same team within the same time period that these two films are about as different an experience as you can get in action cinema. THE KILLER for all of its praise as the definitive action thriller is actually kind of surprisingly artsy and prosaic at times, with it's action coming in spits and spats and it's primary concern being the relationship between it's trio of lead characters. It's a film I really like, but it's also a film that I can understand underwhelming people familiar with it's reputation. To me it feels like THE KILLER is a product of its time and place, with it's action sequences and choreography working as a prototype for future films to come. It's the beginning of an action film formula and I don't think Woo really refines his style until HARD BOILED. It also doesn't help that the film is largely peopled by ciphers, ciphers who aren't particularly fun to spend time with. Ah Jong and Li Ying never really seem to have much of a compelling relationship in the film with Ah Jong being at times monosyllabic and Li Ying desperately trying to hide man-crush. Jennie meanwhile seems to exist purely as a plot point. It doesn't help that the villains aren't particularly well defined either, they're just their and defined by their shades or their matching white outfits. As such the stakes never feel properly set up because it's hard to care about Ah Jong and Li, and you don't really care about bringing justice to the unnamed army of mooks.
HARD BOILED on the other hand is built around the relationship between Tequila and Alan and because Chow Yun-Fat and Tong Leung are awesome the relationship actually works. It helps that they're up against Anthony 'motherfucking' Wong at his maniacal best and that he has a character like Mad Dog, who is still one of my favourite action film henchmen, at his disposal. HARD BOILED is a far bigger, far more technically ambitious, film than THE KILLER but it always feels to me like it has a far firmer grasp on it's characters than THE KILLER ever does. The only thing that hurts HARD BOILED is that's it's kind of horribly paced and the half hour before the final hospital shoot out (which is still one of my all time favourite action sequences) sort of judders along with no sense of urgency or agency. What makes the film work, aside from it's insane pyrotechnics, is how well all the ancillary characters work. It's a movie full of broad, fun, characters and everyone gets their chance to shine. It's also hellaciously violent, I think Tequila matches the entire bodycount of Die Hard whilst ziplining into the weapons factory and the film has no qualms about letting the murder run rampant. Michael Gibbs score, aside from sounding similar to Horner's work on Commando, is great too. I especially love the really heavy drum beat, and fanfare, which kicks in whenever shits about to go down.
But I'm genuinely interested on the Chud consensus on this, so gentlemen (and women) get voting.
