Hard Boiled review – John Woo’s explosive 1992 cop thriller is pure action mayhem | film

COhn Woo’s Hong Kong cop thriller from 1992 has now been re-released; It’s pure obscene chaos in which Woo shows himself to be the leading maestro of PAE – an explosion of aimless action – as well as the Mexican standoff scene, in which a pair of sweaty hit men steadily point guns in each other’s faces, mutually hypnotized by sudden immobility, a kind of Zen duality/opposition between killer and victim.

Hard Boiled irresistibly brings together two of Hong Kong cinema’s most beautiful men: Tony Leung and Chow Yun-fat. As Inspector “Tequila” Yuen, Chow became legendary in this film for the scenes in which he had to hold an adorable baby during a final and completely bizarre shootout at the hospital. He and his police officer girlfriend Teresa Chang (Teresa Mo) have previously had to remove all the newborns from the maternity unit, having neatly stuffed cotton buds into their ears so the poor little moths wouldn’t be disturbed by the deafening gunfire. This scene appears to have been mutated from an earlier draft of a screenplay about a lunatic poisoning a child, a horrific idea that was thankfully ditched in favor of this inspired image, making Chow relatable more than anything else.

Yuen is a tough cop who in his spare time plays the clarinet in a jazz club, and wears baggy white shirts of the kind often designed by Andrew Ridgeley. Behind the club’s bar is Wu (played by John Woo himself), a grizzled retired officer who offers him fatherly advice. When Yuen’s partner is killed during the opening shootout at a café, Yuen’s determination to catch the bad guys redoubles.

Among them is aging gangster Uncle Hui (Kwan Hui San), who finds himself in the middle of a growing turf war with Triad boss Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong), a dead-eyed villain who wants to recruit one of Hui’s men: the ultra-chic, devil-may-care Triad killer Alan, played by Tony Leung. But Alan is working undercover for the police, whose boss gets into a heated and funny argument over his payment. He demands a house on Guam with a walled garden; As it is, he also owns a huge yacht that we see him passionately taking out on the water, to the film’s jazzy soundtrack. Not a very discreet status symbol for an undercover cop, surely?

The obnoxious Johnny Wong is importing massive amounts of weapons from mainland China for his attempt to take over Hong Kong and has a devilishly clever idea about where to hide these weapons. Wong is the real villain here. Even the leather-bound killer named Mad Dog (Philip Kwok) turns out to have an unexpected inner core of decency. The stunts are quite impressive, especially the motorcyclists sailing through the air inside a ball of fire, and the gunplay is unique, though I’ve never found the term “ballet” quite appropriate for something so brutal and fast. It’s all so weird that you have to enjoy it, which makes a certain generation of us nostalgic about watching VHS rental tapes on a Friday night.