Hong Kong on film: John Woo’s many action masterpieces of the 1980s and 1990s
For a creative who would go on to direct several of the greatest action movies ever made, John Woo‘s career only ended up heading down that route in the first place when he became disillusioned with filmmaking as an art.
His feature-length debut came with 1974’s Young Dragons, and he would spend the remainder of the decade largely helming martial arts films, as was to be expected of someone who sat under the learning tree of long-time Shaw brothers associate Chang Cheh. The 1980s would mark a sea change, but not the one that would go on to define his legacy.
Operating largely under the banner of comedy, 1985’s Run, Tiger, Run would prove pivotal after uniting Woo with producer Tsui Hark for the first time. Sharing his professional woes, Hark would be the one to provide funding for the movie Woo had really wanted to make along: A Better Tomorrow.
In another first-time collaboration that would have a major impact on both their careers and the entirety of Asian cinema, Woo cast Chow Yun-fat in his breakout role in the story of a gangster trying to reconnect with his estranged police officer brother. It was here that the director would establish what would go on to become the many hallmarks of his work.
Family drama, complex character dynamics, constantly shifting alliances, rich atmosphere, bountiful slow motion, people operating on the wrong side of the law being painted as heroes, and two-handed gunplay with plenty of diving through the air are all present and accounted for in the film, which became a box office sensation and a landmark in the ‘heroic bloodshed’ subgenre.
Yun-fat proved so popular as Mark Lee that he was brought back for the sequel as the character’s identical twin, with A Better Tomorrow II upping the ante and tipping Woo even further into the glorious reaches of bullet-riddled excess. It may not have been quite as good as its predecessor, but it was equally important in further honing its creator’s operating and balletic signature style.
Conspiring to raise the bar even higher, The Killer immediately took its place among the pantheon of action cinema’s all-time greats, with the climactic church-set shootout being one of the most staggering sequences the genre has ever witnessed. Operating with supreme confidence and curating his bespoke style of heightened gun-toting chaos, it became the highest-grossing Hong Kong movie to have been released in the United States since Enter the Dragon, gathering Woo an international following in the process.
Having reached the apex of the artform as the 1980s ended, the 1990s began on a more understated and underrated note with Just Friends before Bullet to the Head increased the levels of melodrama without sacrificing the kinetic, propulsive energy that Woo had made his trademark as the leading light of Hong Kong’s action boom.
Once a Thief marked a return to more overtly comedic territory for the first time in years, but Woo’s extended detour into sprawling tales of cops and criminals elevated a formulaic-sounding heist caper into an underappreciated gem. It was around this time that Hollywood came calling, but the director bowed out in the most incredible fashion imaginable by signing off with what’s arguably his masterpiece.
The end of his fruitfully prolific partnership with Yun-fat, the final feature produced by Hark, an ode to everything he’d devoted to heroic bloodshed, Hard Boiled sent him Stateside in spectacular style. Epic, sprawling, sweeping, and packing enough blood squibs and explosions to make Michael Bay blush, racking up the highest body count in the history of action cinema isn’t even close to being one of its most impressive achievements.
Woo would never again reach those heights – with Face/Off the only one of his American movies that’s even remotely comparable to his Hong Kong halcyon days – but he’d already done enough to go down in history as one of the action arena’s true geniuses.
Directing one of the best films in any genre is an exceedingly rare feat, but through A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled, Woo accomplished it three times at the very least – and arguably more – in the space of just seven years.
