The movie that “redefined” an entire genre, according to John Carpenter
John Carpenter may be the ‘Master of Horror’, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not also a massive action cinema buff, and while he may not have directed a new film in over 15 years, he’s someone who has always been worth listening to.
Although Escape From New York and Assault on Precinct 13 are classics that paved the way for the future of action films, Carpenter wasn’t afraid to praise another great director who became just as influential. There are enough Hollywood figures out there who try to avoid saying anything controversial; hence, the blunt honesty Carpenter has about those he’s worked with is incredibly refreshing, and whenever he praises someone, it should be considered a big deal, because it’s not infrequent that he throws others under the bus.
Even if it doesn’t seem like he’ll be returning to the director’s chair anytime soon, he’s still been actively involved in other aspects of filmmaking and even composed the score for the new Halloween films. Given that he’s still a director who many would cite as being one of the best of all time, he couldn’t have been a better person to introduce some new films that had been added to the Criterion Channel.
The filmmaker is said to have revamped the horror genre when Halloween inspired countless other slasher films, but he believed that the same could be said about Hard Boiled, an action feature directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun-fat in one of his most defining roles, and according to Carpenter, Hard Boiled “redefined action films”.
“Here is one of my favourites,” Carpenter claimed when introducing the film, “There’s a gunfight. The leads get into an elevator, go up, and continue the gunfight on another floor. It’s an incredible film. I recommend it highly.”
The blunt explanation of one of the most famous action scenes in Hard Boiled is exactly what one might expect from him, who has a habit of making his opinion clear on no uncertain terms, and yet, the scene he’s referencing is worthy of that sort of praise. Woo’s style of complex gunplay and martial arts layered within a neo-noir story would be hailed as groundbreaking when it came out and spawned dozens of imitators.
It’s easy to see why Carpenter would have been so impressed with Woo, as Hard Boiled debuted at a time in which he was facing trouble in his own career, wherein 1992 saw the international release of Hard Boiled, it also saw the debut of Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a critically-reviled box office bomb that had survived a chaotic production due to creative differences with Chevy Chase.
Woo would only ascend in subsequent years when he was given the opportunity to direct American action stars, including Jean-Claude Van Damme in Hard Target, Christian Slater in Broken Arrow, Nicolas Cage in Face/Off, and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II, and while Carpenter may have made one final masterpiece in 1994 with In the Mouth of Madness, it was followed up by a series of disappointing films that culminated in his final effort, The Ward, in 2010.
The similarities between Woo and Carpenter don’t stop there, as the legendary Hong Kong filmmaker experienced a similar period of critical decline when many of his films underperformed, but he did manage to earn some of his best reviews in years when he remade his own classic The Killer for Peacock in 2024, which suggest he might still have a few opportunities ahead of him.
