It's amazing how much sheer violence John Woo managed to pack into this rough and quickpaced gangster film. And how many squibs, explosives and blanks the production must have consumed. I don't think I've ever seen a film before that more successfully wades through such a gratuitous amount of carnage without batting an eye. I didn't keep track, but I'm sure that at least 200 gangsters, cops, innocent bystanders, SWAT team members, doctors and hospital patients were gunned down mercilessly in the film. And yet none of them really matter, except for Chow Yun Fat's slain cop partner and the head villain in the end. Perhaps the silliest/most awful moment was when Fat's character was mowing down goons while carrying a baby in his arms (two cotton balls in the ears make the infant oblivious to the awful bloodshed of course) - the renegade cop apologizes to his child ward and wipes the spattered blood off of his gurgling sweet face.
All in all, a fairly engaging action movie and despite the wanton destruction and lack of interest in the value of human life, Hard-Boiled is well written and directed. However, it doesn't have the soul or wit of Woo's earlier film The Killer, which I highly recommend.
All in all, a fairly engaging action movie and despite the wanton destruction and lack of interest in the value of human life, Hard-Boiled is well written and directed. However, it doesn't have the soul or wit of Woo's earlier film The Killer, which I highly recommend.