The Great Movies: Hard Boiled
Chinese cinema have a grand history turning violence into art. It started with martial arts films (more cruelly known in Hollywood as Chop Socky Pics), where fights are more choreographed than most of today's music videos. Fighting became a ballet of punches, kicks, jumps and destruction. Then in the 80s came a filmmaker who started in kung-fu features and then tried his hand in bringing that same ballet feel to gunplay. This made him an instant success internationally as films like A Better Tomorrow and The Killer become successful. But just before that filmmaker, John Woo, was to leave Hong Kong to start a Hollywood career, he made his magnum opus. A film that not only carried the wild sensational gun battles, but also the weight of conscience and mental anguish that came from constant death. That film was Hard Boiled.
Hard Boiled follows two men, one the stereotypical loner cop, the other an undercover agent posing as the right hand hit man to a mob boss. Both are trying to bring down the boss, who has his eye on controlling all of Hong Kong's drug trade. For Tequila (Chow-Yun Fat) the loner cop, he is caught in the catch-22 of bending the rules: he always has the captain on his butt for his tactics, but they always need his results which requires that he keep doing it. For Tony (Tony Leung), he's over his head in the mob and knows it, but cannot leave because he's too valuable where he is for both sides. It's interesting seeing how both men deal with the pressures of constant violence. Tequila plays saxophone in a jazz club; Tony makes one origami swan for every man he kills as a pennance.
The film would feel very conventional if it weren't for the way we see these characters connect to each other, how both these men connect to the captain and how the dynamics are in constant flux. And then there is the constant weight of conscience whether it be about killing or saving lives. Curious how the film's climax comes with a burning hospital, and yet unlike other action films, it doesn't just follow the gun battles, but on the saving of human lives by ordinary heroes.
But don't get me wrong; Woo didn't lose his touch when it does come to the action. He still creates some of the most imaginative fights I have ever seen. But unlike The Killer, there's a real weight to the conscious act of killing, but it isn't preachy. It is very stylized, but weighted down with a sense of realism.
It is interesting to see this film, which was made fourteen years ago and yet still does much more than action films even today. While those films go on autopilot to give you just enough plot to get to the next fight, this film uses the violence to punctuate its story and ideas.