It is almost impossible to review Hard Boiled and at the same time avoid the bottomless anus-bowl of cliches that surround it. I’m sure it’s been described as “a high octane thrill ride”, and even on the box it says Hard Boiled is “an action fan’s dream”. This is all true, but plain and simple it is just a damn awesome movie. I am at a loss for bad things to say about it. Not many movies get me as pumped up as Hard Boiled does. It uses an arsenal of well executed techniques to draw the viewer into each and every action sequence. Woo also manages to craft these explosive scenes so that he actually makes you feel stupid if you miss something cool. There are many small and beautiful things going on during all of the crimson waterworks that you may not notice the first time through. One image that really stuck out to me was during the first action scene in the teahouse. There is a shot of someone getting blasted in the leg. The bullet goes through a table first, so you get this foreground picture of the table’s leg busting in two as the man’s leg snaps right behind it. It is really fantastic in that it was totally unnecessary.

Speaking of cool, Chow Yun-Fat is just a straight up shaolin playa. He was made for the “bullet ballet”. Hand-crafted by the movie gods and then issued out to John Woo. Surprisingly, he pulls off all the right moves and then turns out to be a great actor as well. This is why all of the scenes between shoot-outs aren’t dull. I actually cared about Tequila and whether he survived. I even cared a little about his relationship with his girlfriend, and that wasn’t even played on that much. Every scene is a necessary piece to the film. Unlike most movies, I didn’t really feel like there was any filler.

Style is, of course the essence of a John Woo film, and I personally think that this is close to, if not his best. It’s certainly my favorite. Even the opening of the movie which simply shows a drink being mixed in a smoky jazz bar, has such a finesse to it, that you are immediately sucked into the world. In a way, this start to the film is almost dreamlike. You see Tequila performing jazz, and it seems like an unconventional introduction. Whereas most movies would like to introduce you to the character in a way that shows you he is a police officer (or whatever else the occupation may be), Woo opens the film showing Tequila as a human being with an interest aside from work and killing. I just thought this strayed away from the norm and was very refreshing. I say if new film-makers wanna copy John Woo’s style, they should try and focus on the more subtle aspects, instead of leading people to believe his only influence is jumping sideways in slow motion.

I could write an entire review solely on Hard Boiled’s theme music if there wasn’t someone to stop me and if people would actually be able to sit through it. While I can say that a lot of films have great soundtracks with tons of classic tunes, this one doesn’t. That’s because all it needs is one sac-busting song to play throughout the whole thing. If I made an action movie, I would have to shoot John Woo and burn all the copies of this movie so I could use the song myself (I guess I could buy the rights but this sounds more fun). Whenever this song came on in the movie, which was about every ten minutes, I knew something incredible was going to happen. And the song never failed me once. Hell, I use the damn thing on my answering machine. I’m sure if I slapped that song in a gay porn, J.D. Nguyen would be all eyes.

So a couple thousand buckets of blood, countless empty clips, and an hour and a half later, it should all be over. The dust should have settled by now. But an epic action flick can’t be complete without a jaw-dropping 20 minute finale of non-stop mayhem. I won’t even go into the masterfully crafted Hospital war zone scene too much, but lets just say no one is safe, and even newborn babies are targets. Woo doesn’t screw around, and when he ended this movie, he made sure that it was complete.

Basically, if you haven’t seen this yet, then I believe you owe it to yourself to bump it up to the next movie on your to-buy list. I know it’s hard, but push back that rancid copy of Nowhere to Hide that you’ve been meaning to throw your money at. Really, don’t get that movie damnit!!