The importance of Christianity in the films of John Woo
While it can be easy to perceive the films of John Woo as merely self-gratifying pieces of action cinema, the truth is that they have several underlying moments of symbolism and imagery that reveal far more profound truths than just gangsters fighting police officers and hitmen taking out their targets.
Above all, from a biographical perspective, Woo’s Christian upbringing seems to come up the most among all the slow-motion sequences, gun-fu, and violent bloodshed of the likes of Hard Boiled, The Killer, and A Better Tomorrow. Woo’s parents, who were Protestant Christians, had been persecuted during Mao’s reign in China. As a young boy, Woo himself had thought of becoming a Christian minister before discovering cinema’s wonders.
By the time Woo had made it into his director’s role, beginning with his 1974 debut The Young Dragons, he would start to infuse his works with the Christian imagery of his younger life, firstly, to offer his praise to God and secondly, to explore the themes and motifs of his drama concerning the longstanding narratives and meanings of the Christian faith.
Many of Woo’s films feature Christian imagery at great length. Take, for instance, the character of Mark in 1986’s A Better Tomorrow, who is often depicted with a cross necklace, showing his faith, akin to Woo’s, and his quest for redemption. As Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-fat take part in the heroic bloodshed of the film, their journeys of faith are counterposed with the sheer violence that occurs around them, just as Jesus Christ had suffered in his final days on Earth.
Redemption would also be significant in one of Woo’s most essential films, 1989’s The Killer. Chow Yun-fat’s hitman character, Ah Jong, is seeking forgiveness for his previous “sins” after accidentally blinding an innocent woman during a job. In taking on one last job to help the woman pay for eye surgery, Ah Jong takes a journey of penance, sacrificing himself for the good of another as a method of atoning for his previous actions. The Killer also features one hell of an action showdown in a church, with Woo showing that the actions of his characters really ought to be considered as being in the presence of the Lord.
One of the most prominent symbolic images in Woo’s films is the use of birds, which the director credits to his Christian faith. “I’m a Christian, and the birds are a powerful Christian symbol,” he once told The Crimson. “Sometimes, I use the birds to represent innocence. When people are killing, and in war, innocent people are always being killed. Also, I like to use the pigeon to represent the presence of spiritual things.”
Elsewhere, in Hard Boiled, released in 1992, Woo toys with the Christian battle between good and evil through his protagonists. Tequila is a police officer with hardened morals who occasionally acts outside the lawbook’s confines to do the right thing, providing scope for more comprehensive moral judgment. Alan is another cop, but he seems to have less of a forthright stance on his morals and, therefore, is representative of an internal ethical battle, much like Jesus’ apostles Thomas and Judas had once faced.
In giving his characters quests for self-sacrifice and paths of redemption, Woo can reflect his faith and beliefs in the world, as informed by his Christianity. In that light, Woo managed to take the action genre to new artistic heights by dousing it generously in philosophical, moral, and religious insight and asking important existential and spiritual questions.
Sure, Woo’s films are just as entertaining and exhilarating as they come, with some of the finest moments of action arriving due to the director’s commitment to high-octane cinema. However, by adding thematic complexity to his narratives and using Christian imagery and symbolism at length, Woo showed that even the action film genre can tap into the most important truths of morality, history and religion.
