John Woo’s Hard Boiled makes extravagant gunfights worth caring about, with Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung Chiu-wai giving the destruction a human centre. The police story is thin, but the action more than compensates.
John Woo’s Hard Boiled is an exhilarating action film with a police story that occasionally needs forgiving. A renegade cop and an undercover officer take on Triad gun-runners, and the director gives their capacity to trust one another more attention than the mechanics of the case. It is enough to make the shooting matter, even when the shooting goes on beyond any reasonable measure. Woo is plainly enjoying the possibilities of an armed confrontation, and much of the pleasure comes from following his choices.
Chow Yun-Fat gives Inspector ‘Tequila’ Yuen the confidence this sort of extravagance needs: he can make recklessness look like the obvious course of action. Tony Leung Chiu-wai, as Alan, gives us more cause to worry about the man doing the shooting. Their different temperaments give the male bonding some substance, so the film need not stop for a speech every time it wants us to care. Both performances stay readable amid the commotion.
Horace Wong Wing-Hang’s cinematography gives the violence enough room to be seen; slow motion lets us take in the movement rather than merely register another hit. The editing, credited to Ah Chik, Hai Kit-Wai, Woo and David Wu, can be frantic without making all that choreography seem disposable. We flinched at the physical stunt work in the teahouse. Bodies in motion keep the danger tangible, even when the staging is too extravagant to mistake for ordinary police work. There is pleasure in watching the timing as well as the impact.
James Leung Wah-Sing’s production design matters because the action needs places that can be used and damaged, and the teahouse gives that destruction a familiar setting. The pleasure is partly in seeing how thoroughly Woo can disrupt somewhere meant for sitting down. The music, credited to Michael Gibbs and James Wong Jim, is less distinctive, and its contribution can feel secondary when the staging is this busy. It supports the excitement without supplying much we would remember separately.
The screenplay by Gordon Chan and Barry Wong Ping-Yiu is less assured when it has to make the investigation interesting between confrontations. Conversations about a policeman’s responsibilities have their place, but they sometimes seem to explain feelings the actors have already made clear. The occasional humour helps, especially when it lets the film acknowledge the absurdity of its own excess. At 126 minutes, though, there is room to tire of the repeated insistence that every exchange of gunfire must outdo the last.
Against the standards of the action thriller, Woo puts an unusual amount of character into exaggerated movement. The gunfights have the pleasure of rehearsed performance, with stars whose different temperaments remain clear through the noise. Their attachment to each other supplies a reason to worry about where all this enthusiasm might lead. Woo leaves room for humour even while insisting that we care about the men doing the shooting.
Give it your attention rather than treating the gunfire as background noise. There is too much going on in the movement to watch while doing something else. If a quiet police investigation was the plan, the teahouse provides fair warning.
