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I picked up the Dragon Dynasty release of this movie last week and got a chance to sit down with it for the first time in a while.  That company is blowing me away.  With few exceptions, they're becoming the Criterion Collection for fans of Asian cinema.  I'm a huge fan of Hong Kong action and heroic bloodshed movies.  This is probably my favorite of them all.

http://www.cinema-suicide.com/2007/07/30/hot-handed-god-of-cops-hard-boiled/

I am so happy that someone is finally talking about how awesome Hard Boiled is. 

Usually when people talk about John Woo's Hong Kong days, they always bring up either "The Killer", "A Better Tomorrow", or "Bullet in The Head".  And while those are all decent films, "Hard Boiled" blows them all away, IMO. 

I'm avoiding the DD DVD of Hard Boiled due to the fact that they cropped the image and then stretched it back out making everyone in the movie look like they put on 50 pounds. 

But I do agree that it's a fantastic movie.  I've always preferred it over The Killer. 

Here's a few snapshots from the Dragon Dynasty release of Hard Boiled. I don't see anything drastically wrong with the transfer. The HK bootleg I had before this was horribly stretched and severely pixelated. Compared to that, this is bliss.

(http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l26/halfwildhalfchild/HardBoiled1.jpg)

(http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l26/halfwildhalfchild/HardBoiled2.jpg)

(http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l26/halfwildhalfchild/HardBoiled3.jpg)

(http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l26/halfwildhalfchild/HardBoiled4.jpg)

I've always thought The Killer was okay but it's not a patch on Hard Boiled, it's a cracking film.

The Killer is ok, but it's gotten a hell of a lot of unexplained hype over the years.  People seem to laud its action, and its emotional scenes, but to be honest, I always found "Bullet in The Head" to be more emotionally wrenching than The Killer. 

When I want to introduce a friend to the greatness of John Woo's glory days, Hard Boiled is the film I show them. 

Back when John Woo was blowing up in Hollywood, some heavy hitters like Tarantino name dropped it heavily in interviews and a lot of people went out and rented it based on that alone but the fascination ended there, no one ever thought to check out A Better Tomorrow or Hard Boiled which were also circulating at the time.  I think Bullet In The Head is probably Woo's heaviest movie and far more intense than The Killer, as well.  Unfortunately, the only way to get it was through bootlegs and expensive Tai Seng video tapes. If you were lucky enough to live in an area with a big Asian population, you could go to Chinatown and buy it or rent it, but most people I know didn't really care enough to look much deeper than what was at the local video store.

I'm still waiting for another wave of heroic bloodshed to come out of Hong Kong.  There are so many false starts.  A few years ago it looked like Johnny To was going to single handedly revive it but he was so spotty with the quality of his movies.  I have Time and Tide on the slate for tonight but I'd rather my blog not turn into Kung Fu Cult Cinema because it's tough to contend with those guys.  I think I know a lot about Asian cinema and then I drop by their forums and am quietly humbled.

I also picked up that Dragon Dynasty set of Hard Boiled.  Up until now I've had to watch the film on my Long Shong DVD copy and the Mei Ah DVD that was released a while back.

This new DD set is by far the best that Hard Boiled has looked.  It's clear, and everything is near perfect.  I ended up watching it last night, and I'm still in awe with the film.  My only problem is that it feels like three different films throughout it's runtime.  The opening fight in the restaurant doesn't feel the same as the warehouse scene which in turn doesn't feel like the last hour or so at the hospital.  Don't get me wrong, as far as action films go, it's hard to beat....it's just a little uneven in places.

I'm actually one who likes The Killer better.  I picked it up on a whim and wasn't aware that it was a Woo film upon my initial viewing.  It's a strong damn film.  The action scenes, when they occur, are fantastic and the acting is great as well.  I love the story, and Fat really pulls off his character.  It's a bit cliched by today's standards after Woo's trademarks have been used over and over, and mocked numerous times.  Overall though, I still enjoy it a bit more. 

I do highly recommend picking up Hard Boiled though.  It's an awesome film and one that's great to show an unsuspecting friend.  My favorite thing I've ever heard from one of my friends while watching the film with a friend was:

"Holy Sh*t!  Did that baby just p!ss on him and put out the flames!?!?"

Yes...yes he did.

I actually have Bullet in The Head on Laserdisc, complete with subtitles.  It was a Christmas present from my late father a number of years back.  He never really explained how he got it, but I think he may have had a few connections for that sort of thing, being a media producer who worked for Cornell. Plus my town has an ever-growing Asian population, which probably helped. 

The Killer's not a bad film, by any means, I didn't mean to come off like that earlier.  I just like Hard Boiled better, simply because it has more action and bloodshed.  It's a shallow reason, I know, but there you go.   :teddyr:

I do agree that Hard Boiled is a little uneven...but the awesomeness of the shootouts and other action sequences can usually make me forget all that. 

I'm going to see if I can import the Tartan Asian Extreme edition at some point as it is still viewed as having the best picture quality of all countless Hard Boiled DVD's that have been released in the world (legally and illegally).   I don't think that Chow Yun Fat participated in the TAE edition either though.

I'd be surprised if the picture quality is better than this new Dragon Dynasty disc.  I've seen the film in many different variations and this print just absolutely blew me away.  The only problem is that there are occasionally lines in the film, but that is the film itself that is to blame, not the transfer.  I found the transfer to be extremely crisp but I wish that the soundtrack would have been reworked as it still sounds like a mono track even when watching via surround sound.

This is quite confusing in the movie actually.  If I recall correctly, in the commentary track on the old American DVD, Woo explains that the original plot concept was heavily changed after shooting the opening scene (they had to shoot the teahouse scene right away, as it was set to be demolished).  So what you get is a guy SOMETIMES referred to as an informant (and if so, why does he shoot at cops?) and SOMETIMES referred to as an undercover (and the same question applies).  It's a plot hole, but a relatively minor one.

BTW, while I'm sure Bey Logan does a good enough job, and I love Dragon Dynasty's other release, I think I'm always gonna prefer my old American-release DVD, thanks to the very good John Woo/Terence Chang commentary.  The transfer, while a bit speckled and spotty in places, is on the whole quite good.


Really?  I almost never hear people bringing up Bullet in the Head, and A Better Tomorrow rarely.  The Killer and Hard-Boiled are almost certainly his most well-known Asian films in America...  You see them the most in video stores at least, and I see them discussed the most online. 

I suspect Hard-Boiled is so popular here because it is the most westernized of his Chinese films.  CYF's character is the least complex of the major Woo characters he played (even less complex than his silly character in once a Thief), and the most like an American archtype (the comparison to Dirty Harry is a good one).  Tony Leung is complex, and gives the best performance in the film (his change of facial expressions in slow motion in one sequence sums up his character, really), but his character has much in common with other undercover characters in American gangster films.  The themes of brotherhood and honor are there, but are downplayed. 

And in actually, it plays out something like a buddy cop film, albeit stretched a lot for some Hong Kong and Woo conventions.  Some have claimed Woo designed the film as a test to show Hollywood he could make their style of films, and evidently it worked.

I'm not knocking Hard-Boiled - I love the film, actually, and have seen it many times. 

BTW, my favorite Woo film on the whole is still A Better Tomorrow.  It's cheesy at times, but I love the storyline in the film, the melodrama is excellent, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the three lead performances are great.  The action is good too - just too bad Woo hadn't quite gotten it dead on yet, as he would in his next film, the inferior A Better Tomorrow 2.

After he kills Uncle Hoi and his crew?  I love that scene.

By the way, thanks for dropping by my site.  Looks like you checked out a bunch of my articles.  I appreciate the traffic.

I too love the scene where Leung kills Uncle Hoi.  As he turns around, in slow motion, you can see the tears in his eyes and it's a genuine scene.  It seems that scene sticks out for a lot of us.


Jim H,

A Better Tomorrow is a great film.  If I'm not mistaken, I actually picked it up a while back after your recommendation of the film on this board.  I feel that both A Better Tomorrow and A Better Tomorrow II are about equal.  The first one is a great crime drama, and Mark is a great character.  I recall being quite surprised during my first viewing since everything I had seen from Woo previously had been gunfight laden.  ABT is a big change from that type of film making with the only real gunfight being at the end of the film.

ABTII, despite being intellectually inferior to the original, is still a lot of fun since you begin to see Woo's skill at the action scenes.   I don't care for the way that they brought back Mark (Chow Yun Fat) but it's a minor complaint.  That final battle in the house....fantastic.

Hard Boiled is a pesonal favorite. I love the over the top shoot outs, I think the Killer and Hard Boiled must have the highest bullet/body count in any movies I've seen.

I just got Steven Chow's King of Comedy on netflix, haven't watched all of it but its a parody of the over the top HK action movies.

Inframan,

I actually just watched King Of Comedy about two weeks ago.  It's a lot of fun, and actually very funny.

The naked child thorughout the film is disconcerting though. 

After I saw Shaolin Soccer I was hellbent on seeing more Stephen Chow movies but I was almost immediately turned off to the rest of them.  I got God Of Cookery, King of Beggars and the first Chinese Oddyssey but they had all the hallmarks of Hong Kong comedy that usually turns me off to the stuff.  Most of it relies so heavily on hokey physical comedy and REALLY dumb jokes. 

I haven't watched God of Cookery, but I didn't much like King of Beggars or Chinese Odyssey (either of them).  I can enjoy typical Hong Kong comedys, but only in very limited doses.  Whenever he's at his best, his style actually departs from the norm somewhat...  There's a lot of spoofery and sight gags rather than the typical lame gags and untranslateable puns.  His best films I've seen include Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle, the 60 Million Dollar Man, Forbidden City Cop and From Beijing With love.

I freaking LOVE Hard Boiled.

I remember being practically blown back in my seat the first time I watched Hard-Boiled :hot:(which was probably about 7-8 years ago now).  I had never seen an action movie that fast paced and explosive in my life. So naturally, afterward I started hunting down most of Woo's other overseas films as well.

It's to bad that most of his American work is awful(except for Hard Target, which was ok). Especially when he's responsible for bringing us some of the greatest action movies ever.

Oh btw Hi everybody. Long time lurker, first time poster. :smile:

Welcome aboard, Crawling Chaos!  Can we call you Azathoth for short?

Welcome aboard.

I go pretty easy on John Woo's American stuff.  I love Hard Target.  There used to be an uncut bootleg that circulated back when I traded tapes.  I never got it.  I think Revok sold it from his site but I'd heard iffy things about him.  Supposedly it was significantly longer than the theatrical cut. Always wondered if it was worth it.

I also enjoyed Face/Off like crazy. 

One of my favorite things about the success of John Woo around the time Face/Off came out were all these little video distros coming out of the woodwork with this movie or that movie that either Woo or Chow Yun Fat were involved with from the early 80's.  I rented one called Hard Boiled Killers (actual title Modern Heroes) once that I was certain was going to suck, and it did.  It starred Chow Yun Fat in a gunplay role but the action wasn't even remotely awesome.  Later on I would learn that the high flying style that John Woo is so closely associated with was literally invented in Hong Kong cinema by him.  Before A Better Tomorrow there was nothing like those movies.  Only after that movie did the heroic bloodshed wave start and every other movie was a cops and robbers shoot out with guys flying through the air, guns akimbo.  Awesome.

Personally I prefer Nyarlathotep, but hey, Azathoth works too.

Curses, I mixed up my Lovecraftian mythos!  Must be time for me to give those books a reread.

You're certainly right about his action style (at least, I'm not aware of anything quite like it in terms of gunbattles).  There are a couple of movies that predate A Better Tomorrow and have elements of heroic bloodshed, but none I've seen that do it all.  Long Arm of the Law is the most well known.  I've been meaning to get a copy for a while, apparently well worth checking out.  In any case, it is difficult to underestimate the influence of A Better Tomorrow.  You can divide HK films of the 80s and up til the early 90s into pre and post A Better Tomorrow categories, pretty convincingly. 

Also, there's a Shaw Bros. film I have called the Singing Killer.  Uneven, but it's early 70s and has a (short) shootout at the end which is actually quite entertaining.  Not Woo-like, but it is interesting to see how they did shootouts in Hong Kong in the days before Woo and people like Ringo Lam and Jonnie To.

As a final note, major Woo fans might want to check out the Dragon Dynasty release of Last Hurrah For Chivalry.  Not a great film, but numerous Wooisms make early appearances here - dreamy imagery, character archtypes (some claim one character is what became Chow Yun-Fat's character in A Better Tomorrow, but I don't quite buy it), use of slomo, frame compositions, even the use of violence at times.  And it's a kung fu flick.