Hard Boiled
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- For the Frank Miller and Geof Darrow comic book, see Hard Boiled (comic). For the literary genre, see Hardboiled. For the food, see boiled eggs.
| Hard Boiled | |
|---|---|
 Dragon Dynasty Region 1 DVD, released in 2007 |
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| Directed by | John Woo |
| Produced by | Terence Chang Linda Kuk |
| Written by | Barry Wong Story: John Woo |
| Starring | Chow Yun-Fat Tony Leung Chiu Wai |
| Distributed by |  Golden Princess Film Production Co. Ltd. The Weinstein Company (DVD) Dragon Dynasty (DVD) Rim (dubbed version) Criterion Collection (DVD) |
| Release date(s) | April 16, 1992 |
| Running time | 126 min. |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | Cantonese |
| Budget | $4,500,000 US (est.) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Hard Boiled (traditional Chinese: 辣手神探; pinyin: Làshǒu shéntàn; literally: Hot-Handed God of Cops) is a 1992 Hong Kong action film directed by John Woo. It is also known as God of Guns (traditional Chinese: 鎗神/槍神; simplified Chinese: 枪神; pinyin: Qiāngshén). It was the last film Woo directed in his native Hong Kong before relocating to Hollywood.
The movie begins as an apparently straightforward film about the bond between a detective and an undercover cop as they fight a triad gang. However, it develops into an over two hour action extravaganza, with a body count of 307. [1] It is structured around four major action setpieces: the opening teahouse shootout, the warehouse betrayal in the middle, the dock shootout, and the climactic thirty-minute hospital shootout.
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[edit] Cast
- Chow Yun-Fat - Inspector "Tequila" Yuen
- Tony Leung - Alan
- Teresa Mo - Teresa Chang
- Philip Chan - Supt. Pang
- Philip Kwok - Mad Dog
- Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (credited as Anthony Wong)- Johnny Wong
- Bowie Lam - Benny/Ah Lung
- Bobby Au-Yeung - Lionheart
- Ng Shui Ting - Tequila's assistant
- Kwan Hoi-Shan - Mr. Hoi
- Tung Wei - Foxy
[edit] Responses
Hard Boiled opened on the same weekend as Jet Li and Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China II and suffered for it, but still managed to be successful. Hard Boiled grossed $19,711,048 HKD during its Hong Kong run.
Hard Boiled is considered one of the best heroic bloodshed movies of all time, and perhaps the definitive example, if only for the bloodshed.[citation needed] It increased John Woo's and Chow Yun Fat's popularity outside Hong Kong, and gained a unique cult status among genre fans worldwide.[citation needed]
In the 22 June 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly, this was stated as the "9th greatest action film of all time".
[edit] Reviews
- *****. More exciting than a dozen Die Hards. - Empire Magazine
- John Woo's action sequences are first rate...as enchanting and graceful as a ballet! - Esquire
- The action sequences are among the best ever filmed. - Andy Klien, Asian film expert
- Hold on to your seats! - Premiere (magazine)
- An action fan's dream! - New York Daily News
- ...nirvana for seekers of action.. - Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
- One of the best action films of all time. - James Rocchi, Netflix
[edit] Long take
Hard Boiled includes a famous action sequence in a burning hospital that is a single handheld camera long take lasting 2 minutes and 42 seconds in which Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung alternately fight off enemies in frantically choreographed action and engage in emotional dialogue, through many corridors and rooms spanning two levels of the hospital, including an intervening elevator ride. On the Criterion DVD, an entire chapter (appropriately titled "Two minutes, forty-two seconds") is devoted to this shot.
[edit] Stranglehold
John Woo collaborated with Midway Games on Stranglehold, a 2007 console game sequel starring Tequila. The highest difficulty of the game is, appropriately, "Hard-Boiled".
The PlayStation 3 version of the Collector's Edition of Stranglehold contains the only high-definition version of the movie Hard Boiled currently available (as of November, 2007) as an option off the main menu. It is only watchable on the PlayStation 3, and not other Blu-ray players, and as it is played back from inside the game as opposed to the standard PS3 movie player, lacks many common playback options such as fast forwarding, rewinding, or the ability to change subtitle or language tracks during movie playback (though subtitles and language tracks are selectable from the main menu).
[edit] Trivia
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- The movie was referenced in Infernal Affairs (2002), not only with Tony Leung's character again playing a cop working undercover for the triads, but an obvious homage to the scene where Leung's character receives surveillance gear from his superintendent along with a birthday gift. The difference being that in Hard Boiled Tony Leung receives a lighter and in Infernal Affairs he receives a watch. Also the superintendent from Infernal Affairs was played by Anthony Wong Chau Sang, the main villain of Hard Boiled.
- There is a Taiwanese DVD that includes a cut of the film that is 5 minutes longer, and features radically different editing in the final hospital section of the film, with a few more shots of the violence ensuing making up the extra footage.
- Though it was only referred to after its UK video release, the film The Last Blood directed by Wong Jing starring Andy Lau is sometimes released or referred to under the title Hard Boiled 2: Last Blood (despite being released earlier than Hard Boiled).
- The title of the film (辣手神探) is part of the Chinese title for the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry (Chinese: 辣手神探夺命枪; pinyin: Làshǒu shéntàn duómìng qiāng; literally "Hot-Handed God of Cops Killer Gun").
- In the video game The Matrix: Path of Neo, the weapons training level is an exact replica of the opening teahouse shootout in this film, down to Neo wearing the same outfit as Chow Yun-Fat.
- The video game Max Payne contains several references to Hard Boiled, including Bullet Time, a slow motion mode, and many of the relentless action sequences are undeniably similar (a warehouse shootout, for example). One of the game's difficulty modes is in fact called Hard Boiled. More blatantly a password into a mafia barricade is "John Woo".
- A character in the Time Crisis video game series called Wild Dog is an obvious reference to the villian Mad Dog in Hard Boiled. Wild Dog wears an eyepatch much like Mad Dog who later wears one in the hospital scenes of the film.
- The film is rated number(#) 5 on the "Most on Screen Deaths" chart [2]
- The last film to ever be banned in Sweden.[citation needed]
- John Woo also participated in the movie as the man behind the bar who gives advice to Inspector "Tequila" Yuen
- In the morgue scene when Tequila and Alan look for a secret passage into the underground part of the hospital, Alan pulls a corpse out resembling Bruce Lee, even wearing a yellow jumpsuit similar to the one Lee doned in the film "Game of Death"
- The movie is referenced in the song " Mac 10 Handle" by rapper Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) and is also shown playing on television in the music video.
[edit] Marketing
The Weinstein Company owned Dragon Dynasty label, which distributes Asian action films as collector's items, released a "2-Disc Ultimate Version" of the film on 26th July 2007, along with another John Woo film, Last Hurrah for Chivalry. The film is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen with optional Cantonese Dolby Digital and DTS (Digital Theater System) 5.1, as well as an English 5.1 dub. The extras are a commentary by Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan on the first disc, as well as interviews with director John Woo and producer Terence Chang and a sneak peek at the upcoming game sequel Stranglehold (video game) on the second disc. However, on the internet criticism sparked over the release as owners of the DVD made several complaints after comparing the DVD with previous editions. One example is that the English subtitles available on the DVD are not genuine subtitles, but dubtitles made by a previous dub for the Criterion Collection version. Another complaint is that the film's original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 is cropped to 1.85:1, thus making the characters look slightly fat.
Hard Boiled is also available in a DVD-9 Region 0 PAL disc by United Kingdom distributor Tartan Asia Extreme featuring anamorphic presentation, 5.1 surround sound in Dolby (Cantonese and English) and DTS (Cantonese), and newly-created English subtitles. It is unedited, but only 122 minutes long due to PAL time-compression.
The current Hong Kong DVD of the movie is a DVD-9 dual-layer Region 0 NTSC version from Mei Ah Entertainment featuring featuring anamorphic presentation, 5.1 surround sound in Dolby (Cantonese and Mandarin) and DTS (Cantonese). Subtitles include Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and English. It is unedited and 128 minutes long.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Hard Boiled at the Internet Movie Database
- Criterion Collection essay by Barbara Scharres
- Movie Body Counts Site where the film is broken into sections
- Comparison of different DVD versions at DVDCompare.net
[edit] Notes
^ After A Better Tomorrow (1986) ("A god is someone who controls his destiny.") and God of Gamblers (1989)
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