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Fans of action films are probably familiar with the work of John Woo. The director of Broken Arrow, Face/Off and, most recently, Mission Impossible 2, came to Hollywood on the basis of the intense action films he created in the mid-eighties to the early-nineties in Hong Kong. Imitated and championed by younger American directors like Quentin Tarantino and Richard Rodriguez for his intense style, Woo was, until 1986, when "A Better Tomorrow" was released, best known as a director of comedies in his own country and remained a virtual unknown in America. Although this article is not comprehensive, it aims to high-light those films from this period which are most easily available in Europe and America.
"A Better Tomorrow" introduced the Hong Kong film world to a new kind of action movie and Woo's style was as indelible as a signature onto each individual frame of the film. As the director himself would probably be the first to admit, his films are collaborative efforts, and his casting of Chow Yun Fat as the intense, brooding Mark in this film was a master stroke.
The story revolves around a counterfeiting ring and deals with the themes Woo has explored time and again in his best films: personal honour and the bonds of family and friendship. Although the themes aren't as developed as they would be in later works such as "A Bullet in the Head" (1990) and "The Killer" (1989), "A Better Tomorrow" has some of the finest action sequences ever put on film and features most of what would become the director's signature moves: the elegant use of slow-motion and still frames juxtaposed with quick edits, gun-point stand-offs (famously stolen by Tarantino among others) and themes which are revealed pictorially as much as they are through dialogue in a conventional action film.
"A Better Tomorrow 2" which quickly followed in 1987 seems like it was rushed a bit to profit from the original's popularity, at least as far as narrative is concerned. It nonetheless shows further development of the director's style and features another cool performance by Chow Yun-Fat (who returns as the twin brother of his character in the first film in a plot twist that puts a great strain on the viewer's suspension of disbelief).
"The Killer" (1989) is probably the best known Hong Kong film in the director's oeuvre. Chow Yun Fat plays Jeffrey, a hitman betrayed by the mob and hunted by the cops. Although this film is as filled with gun fire as any of Woo's other action films, it is ultimately a meditation on the evil of violence and Jeffrey is as much the protagonist of the film as the cop chasing him (played by Danny Lee), an anti-hero in search of redemption.
"Bullet in the Head" (1990) marked a slight departure for Woo from the three earlier films as well as from the one that came after it. For one thing, this is the only one of the five films dealt with here that perennial favourite Chow Yun Fat doesn't appear in. It concerns three small time hustlers (Tony Leung, Jackie Cheung and Simon Yam) who head to Vietnam in search of opportunity during the war. A doomed enterprise from the start, it becomes increasingly obvious that one of the three is a weak link whose greed will lead him to betray them. The full cut drags a little in places (at well over two hours) but it's much better than the shortened version that's also on the market. Although most critics rank "The Killer" as Woo's most mature work, "Bullet in The Head" offers an intense vision of the chaos that unravelled in South East Asia in the late 1960's and rivals anything else that's been said on film about the Vietnam War.
Chow Yun Fat returned, again as the lead, in 1992's "Hardboilded". He plays Tequila, a cop who is as cold-blooded as the crooks he hunts down. Tequila is hot on the trail of a group of arms dealers who have their headquarters underneath... a hospital? When he begins to close in and the bad-guys get desperate they take over the hospital and he, along with his temporary partner, played with gusto by Tony Leung, race to stop them as the bodycount mounts. This must be Woo's most violent, action-packed film and if you have a heart condition or get queasy at the sight of a lot of fake blood you probably shouldn't watch it. Also noteworthy is the character of Mad Dog (Philip Kwok), a cool gun for hire with a sense of honour, like Jeffrey in "The Killer" he's an anti-hero to root for.
Although the story-lines sometimes walk a very thin credibility line, the director's intense vision can't help but entrance the viewer of these films. Woo says more in pictures than his imitators do in a thousand lines of dialogue. Even though he's had some memorable moments since arriving in Hollywood, for sheer impact, he has yet to create films as powerful as those he produced in Hong Kong.
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