If you like action movies and haven’t seen anything byJohn Woo, call for help, because you’re going to need some other hands to help get that rock you’re living under off of you. His early work goes back to the 1970s, with some of his best-known titles coming out in the 1980s, withA Better Tomorrowbeing an early film of his definable as a heroic bloodshed/gun fu movie. And then, in the 1990s and 2000s, he made a fair few American movies, includingHard Target,Broken Arrow, and (perhaps infamously)Mission: Impossible II.
Of those movies, A Better Tomorrow has a lot of great stuff in it, but Woo did indeed “better” it in the years following, at least as far as his heroic bloodshed movies go. And those American films have their moments for sure, but they do contain some flaws. Similarly, hisRed Cliffduology is worthy of an honorable mention here for being an impressive epic, but it wasn’t perfect. What’s being focused on below are the John Woo movies that are genuinely masterful, orat least close enough to perfect that pointing out flaws would feel too nitpicky, or even just petty. These are all immensely high-quality action movies, and are ranked from great to greatest.
Starring: Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung, Waise Lee Chi-Hung
For as fun as John Woo’s action movies can be, they also get pretty downbeat at times, with none proving quite as bleak asBullet in the Head. There’s a good amount ofspectacle here, and a high body count, as one might expect from a Woo-directed film, but it’s also very heavy. It starts as a fairly gritty action/crime film, revolving around three friends who find themselves in trouble after killing a well-respected criminal. So, they flee Hong Kong and try to make lives for themselves as criminals in Vietnam, but run into further problems there.
Essentially, becauseBullet in the Headis set in the late 1960s and takes place largely in Vietnam, the main characters get swept up in the Vietnam War, so what was originally a crime film morphs into a war movie. And it’s an uncompromising sort of war film, exploring the psychological impact of being held prisoner by the Vietcong in a way that may remind some ofThe Deer Hunter. It’scertainly not a boring movie, but neither is it fun in the traditional sense. As far as action films go,it’s exceptionally intense and somber, in large part thanks to it not just belonging to the action genre. But it’s powerful and very well-made, ultimately standing as one ofJohn Woo’s more underrated efforts.
Bullet in the Head
4’Last Hurrah for Chivalry' (1979)
Starring: Damian Lau Chung-Yan, Wai Pak, Lau Kong
From one of John Woo’s most underrated movies to the one that is his most underrated movie, here’sLast Hurrah for Chivalry, which is also the best movie he’s done that doesn’t involve gunfights as its main source of action. This is becauseLast Hurrah for Chivalryisa martial arts movie, but so long as you get used to the fact that swords are the main weapons here, instead of guns, then this is still a distinctly Woo-esque movie. Thedrama here is heightened, blood is shed heroically, and everything is extremely well-choreographedfor maximum impact.
As for the story? Well,Last Hurrah for Chivalryis a bit chaotic in that department, but in a way that’s only confusing initially, and ends up working for the film as a whole, since the variety of conflicts and characters does inevitablyensure lots of action scenes can happen. It’s a movie that suggests John Woo could’ve stuck to doing martial arts movies and still become a legendary action movie director, even if the more modern action flicks he ended up doing resonated with more people. At least he got to return to this sort of action (albeit on a much grander scale) with the aforementionedRed Cliff, both parts of which came out in the late 2000s.
Last Hurrah For Chivalry
3’Face/Off' (1997)
Starring: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen
Some people might say thatFace/Offis too stupid to be considered a masterpiece, but there’s also an argument to be made that saying that is more stupid. Of courseFace/Offis dopey. It’s well aware of how ridiculous it is, but the fact that it just commits to the bit so hard is what makes it wonderful.John Travoltaplays the good guy, andNicolas Cageplays a comically evil bad guy. But then, through some ridiculous circumstances, their characters end up swapping faces and, thereby, identities, with Travolta now playing Cage’s character, and Cage playing Travolta’s.
It’s already heightened and wild before the face-swapping, but after the main story gets going, it’s just something else altogether, with slow motion, doves, yelling, jumping during gunfights, anda comically inescapable prisonall being on offer here, along with so much more.Face/Offis about as over-the-top as 1990s action movies get, and that’s saying something, considering how ludicrous so many 1990s action movies are. If you can geton board withFace/Off’s very specific brand of cinematic madness, it’s an undoubtedly brilliant piece ofsilly, endearing, and maximalist cinematic nonsense.
2’Hard Boiled' (1992)
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung, Anthony Wong
Hard Boiledis, quite simply, one of thebest and most satisfying action movies ever made. It could well be the most John Woo film out of all the John Woo films, since it scarcely slows down and feels as though it has the least downtime (downtime here being any scene without explosions, gunfights, slow motion, or none of the above). It’s about one cop who wants revenge on a bunch of criminals, and the alliance he strikes up with another cop who’s undercover, targeting the same bad guys. And they shoot a lot of people and it’s all very spectacular.
Here, the action genre is stripped down to its bare essentials narratively, but the action itself is made to feel larger than life and as explosive as possible.The climax ofHard Boiledisespecially worthy of praise, since it involves a large-scale battle inside a hospital that just goes on and on in the best of ways, and includes huge explosions alongside avery impressive and acclaimed oner. Also,Chow Yun-Fat’s character saves a baby at one point, the infant in one hand and a gun in the other, and that’s just what cinema is all about, you know?
Hard Boiled
1’The Killer' (1989)
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh
Even ifHard Boiledhas the bigger action sequences, andFace/Offhas the more memorable plot,The Killeris still, arguably, John Woo’s masterpiece as an action movie director. It’s a movie that perfectlysums up what heroic bloodshed films are. All the ingredients are here, and it gets the balance right in terms of being both spectacular and surprisingly moving. It’s about an assassin who blinds a woman, by accident, during a mission he undertakes, which motivates him to help her and seek redemption in any way he can, even though doing so puts him in a great deal of additional danger.
The Killer is operating on a whole other level, riding a line between gritty/somber and spectacular/action-packed in a sublime way.
Not many movies have so successfully managed to be melodramas and kick-ass action films at the same time, butThe Killeris just special. It’s operating on a whole other level, riding a line betweengritty/somber and spectacular/action-packedin a sublime way. It tells a simple story and achieves a potentially surprising amount of emotional depth, meaning the less said about whatThe Killerdoes eventually offer, the better. A couple of Woo’s later films might be easier to recommend, or feel a little more fun in the traditional sense, butThe Killerremains the most masterful of his masterpieces.
The Killer
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