150 Word Review: 'Hard Boiled' (1992)
Bite the bullet
Hard Boiled is John Woo at the height of his powers. Woo’s signature Hong Kong action-movie flourishes have become clichés, but friends, every time the beautiful and formidable Chow Yun Fat flies through the air, shooting two guns at once in slow motion, I swoon.
Woo loved the “cops blowing away criminals” genre so much that he turned every scene where bad guys are riddled with bullets into a bloody ballet. Hard Boiled opens with a high-body-count teahouse shootout that turns Chow’s character, nicknamed ‘Tequila,’ into a loose cannon on a revenge mission. He’s teamed up with another icon, Tony Leung, as an undercover agent trying to take down a gun-smuggling ring from inside. There have never been two more acrobatic, soulful badasses in all of high-octane, testosterone-fueled cinema. The final hospital battle is pure rat-a-tat mayhem, with Chow firing a 9mm with one hand while holding a swaddled newborn.