First Shot: Bottle hitting a glass for a sloppy pour. I’m in! Then...a mixer? THEN, what the fuck it that? An oboe? Jeebus, talk about goin downhill fast. Hong Kong oboe jazz. Ain’t great. Ain’t exactly horrible. Good thing Chow Yun-Fat almost pulls off the soulful instruments playin. Almost. And then, the shooting begins. Sweet glorious unimpeded 80s action gunfights. Circa 1992. I’ll allow it.
Tough-as-nails cop with a soft spot for playin wind jazz is great at what he does. At least when it comes to shootin. But those Hong Kong triad criminals are ruthless. Civilian casualties don’t mean dick to them. First main scene in a tea shop with a weird bird fetish, no man, woman or bird is safe. Stupid birds. Story continues. There’s an incident at a library. Who goes to a library besides bums to dump a grumpy and gtfo? Different times, apparently. Things escalate rather quickly after that. And when I say escalate, I mean bullets and body counts. Nobody is spared in the carnage. Except the babies. Because, for the love of all things cased in bullet casings, think of the babies!
Director Woo, besides directing, is in nice smaller role as the bartender. His fifth and last film with Chow Yun-fat (at least with this era of their careers), before Woo moves on to Hollywood. You can tell, this movie is an action extravaganza absolutely tailored for that Hollywood Action scene. Too bad “tastes” really shifted at this time away from that kind of movie, and combined with some less-than-stellar choices in script choices, Woo didn’t really achieve a significant audience on the US side of the world. Neither did Chow Yun-fat, despite putting in some decent roles here and there. Shame. But this? Hard Boiled really hits almost peak “heroic bloodshed” gun-fu cinema. Maybe it is peak? I dunno, I need to watch a few more in the genre to be sure, any suggestions appreciated. But despite being maybe just a little too long on the running time, this one is a pretty great ride for the time and place. Even most of the music doesn’t totally suck (though, credit music excluded; that “song” is a travesty even Taylor Grift wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pile of dead baby corpses. What, too far? Watch the movie, you’ll understand. No, there’s not a 10-foot pile of dead babies. Jeebus, that would, just not be cool no matter what kinda film it was. Just, well, fuckit, watch the fuckin movie. Again if you have to. And you probably should.). Yeah.
