Hard Boiled (1992)

Hard Boiled (1992)

starring Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung

directed by John Woo

128 minutes

Tequila (Chow Yun-fat), a maverick police officer, teams up with Alan (Tony Leung), an undercover cop who is posing as a hit man for illegal arms dealers. Together they work to take down Johnny Wong, one of the top illegal arms dealers in Hong Kong. They work with Police Superintendent Pang and Teresa, Tequila's ex-girlfriend who is also a police officer. Johnny Wong has an army of men working for him including Mad Dog, a top notch killer.

Thoughts

This movie is about 75 percent action. It didn't take long for the action to begin. It stopped briefly here and there but it was close to being non-stop.

This movie is all about the action and the stunts. If you aren't in to that sort of thing then there isn't much point in watching it. There really isn't much to the story itself. The characters get some moments but nothing that feels very deep.

I enjoyed some of the stunts in this movie but as a whole I found the movie to be a bit on the long side of things. I laughed a bit and was amused numerous times but this isn't the sort of movie that makes me think very much.

Notes

I have also seen ChowYun-Fat in A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Replacement Killers (1998), and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

I have seen Tony Leung in numerous other films including Chungking Express (1994), In the Mood for Love (2000), Hero (2002), and Infernal Affairs (2002).

The part of Superintendent Pang was played by Philip Chan. He was an undercover police officer before he began his career as an actor.

The part of Mad Dog was played by Philip Chung-Fung Kwok. He was also the stunt coordinator for the film. He appeared in numerous Shaw Brothers films earlier in his career including Five Deadly Venoms (1978). He was also in one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).

There were four interviews in the DVD set that I borrowed from the library. The interview subjects were John Woo, Terence Chang (producer), Philip Chan, Philip Chung-Fung Kwok. The first three were in English and the last in Chinese. I tried watching the interview with John Woo. It is the longest one of the four. His English is not great and I watched maybe 10 minutes of it before I gave up and moved on. I did watch and enjoyed the the other three interviews including the one that was in Chinese (Cantonese?) which was subtitled in English.