I have to confess that I never saw a John Woo film. I’ve heard the name bandied around a lot but he made his classics at a time when I didn’t live near a cinema that would have shown them. So I was completely floored when I saw The Killer – perfect image composition, brilliant use of symbols and clichés, incredibly fast and precise cutting, shockingly graphical violence that actually serves story and characterisation, and heaps of entertaining gunfights just for good measure. The best action film in a realistic setting I’ve ever seen.
Now the big problem is, where to get his other two classics, A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled? My edition of The Killer was a recent (2002) European “collector’s edition” with a new image transfer, remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, and a couple of extras to boot. Excellent technical quality in this edition, but I understand that most other of Woo’s Hongkong films were treated much worse and are barely worth buying due to the poor quality of the DVD transfer. There were two Criterion editions of The Killer and Hard Boiled but they’re already sold out. Anyone knows a good DVD edition (regardless of region) of A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled?
The Ring I saw was a German DVD edition of the Japanese film by Hideo Nakata, i.e. the most famous of the apparently numerous TV and screen translations of Suzuki Koji’s novel, as explained by the short but informative booklet. Honestly, for most of the film I was about to give this one a “yawn” on my highly sophisticated rating scheme for mixing nonsensical techno mysticism with some snippets of folklore horror – all in all barely more interesting than a good X-Files episode. What changed my mind were the extremely frightening and cleverly surprising final ten minutes. The film is worth watching at least once for that alone (and make sure you read no spoilers beforehand!).
Animatrix is probably well known to anyone here since it’s been pumped into retail with all the force of a successful franchise. In a word, it’s a boring animé tech demo, pretty to look at and occasionally amusing but overall just as retarded as the original movie. You’d expect this stuff as a Special Edition extra. Don’t pay more than five bucks for this DVD, it’s not worth it.
There are a couple of editions available of Hardboiled (well in Region 1), some of which are out of print, but they have varying content (I’m speaking of the Criterion version specifically) so the material is actually different than the one that is in print, which was published by someone else (The Killer was the same way).
I really liked The Ring (US remake), mostly because I’m a big Naomi Watts fan.
I didn’t think Animatrix was that harsh (gave it 3 stars on Amazon) and I felt it was a decent yet very flawed effort.
It looks like there may be a new version of Hard Boiled coming in a month or so. It probably own’t have a lot of extras but should have good audio/video. It will probably be Region 0 encoded so it should play on any player. More info in this thread:
I had a lot more fun with the Animatrix than I did with Matrix Reloaded. I guess that really doesn’t say very much, does it? I liked the Animatrix. There.
I wouldn’t go crazy looking for “A Better Tomorrow”; it’s just not that good. About 5 years ago, a theater that was local to me was showing a John Woo movie or two every week for a few months, and I got to see a bunch of them.
“The Killer” is undoubtedly one of the best, although I really liked “Bullet in the Head,” which is a Vietnam movie–if nothing else, it’s interesting to see a non-American take on the war, and it had a lot of good moments, especially the ending. I’d say it’s on a level with “The Killer.”
I thought “Hardboiled” was decent, but it really dragged on too long. Don’t see his martial arts flicks; they’re just bad.
Hmm, I’ve checked that the two most recent Euro versions of A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled are uncensored, widescreen, and have the original soundtrack… they do, and they are both readily available, so I guess I’m taking a chance on the technical quality. If I really like one of the two I’ll see if I can hunt down a better edition, like the new one that Kevin mentioned.
Will have to check out Bullet in the Head, I saw the title but had never heard of it before.
Edit: Just found the earlier Ring thread. Actually I think I read it at the time but fortunately I had forgotten just about everything before watching the DVD…
Christopher, I’ve seen the Euro DVDs of both A Better Tomorror and Hard Boiled, and they are both decent - I certainly wouldn’t put off watching them because they might not be the ultimate version. For years, I owned tenth generation video bootlegs of both movies, and still watched them a few times a years. Any DVD has to be better than that.
Keep your eye out for A Better Tomorrow 2, which isn’t quite a “good” film but is certainly the most exciting, over-the-top heroic bloodshed movie that Woo ever made. Woo basically directed it as a parody of A Better Tomorrow when he was pressured into filming a completely gratuitous sequel after the first film was such a success. The end gun fight is probably the most frantic, unbelievable gun fight ever put to film. Just don’t expect subtle nuances of character development or anything, which are even less in evidence here than in any of Woo’s other films.
I think Woo should just go into filming gun fights, since his idea of drama and symbolism is pretty embarassing, especially now that he’s shot the same load of flying white doves into the viewer’s eye in basically every single film he has ever shot. Hollywood has basically made John Woo completely irrelevant (although Hard Target was pretty good). But for about four films in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Woo just couldn’t be topped.
I second every word of this post. A Better Tomorrow 2’s finale is downright hilarious. They had to have used a firehose to spray that much red paint on the walls.
One thing about Hard Boiled, since I just watched it again (Christoph, actually, beware the Tartan DVD… it doesn’t have a subtitle option, and it looks like the sides of the screen are partially cut off): it features the world’s most hilariously incompetent police force. Forget Police Academy - in Hard Boiled, even a simple arrest of a couple armed thugs results in hundreds of innocents dead. Cops seem to be completely unaware as to who their coworkers are. At the end of the film, an entire hospital is blown up and what probably amount to thousands of cripples, doctors and nurses slaughtered wholesale, basically because the police pull a fire alarm.
John Woo has said that he made the movie as a reassurance to the public that he wasn’t trying to glorify gangsters with the ABT series and The Killer, but is hard to look at Hard Boiled as anything besides an over-the-top satire of police competence.
This a good reason to see “Once a Thief” (from 1990), , which has no serious side to it, no pretentious moments, just fun. (OTOH, it doesn’t have the huge shoot-outs that his other movies have, either.)
This a good reason to see “Once a Thief” (from 1990), , which has no serious side to it, no pretentious moments, just fun. (OTOH, it doesn’t have the huge shoot-outs that his other movies have, either.)
Plus, you get to see the classic bad subtitle: “With all these aces, you must have AIDS!”
Thanks for the tip but there doesn’t seem to be any better edition available, at least not in Europe. Right now I’m waiting for Royal Mail to finish their extended tea break and ship the DVDs I ordered last week – I’ll post a note about the technical quality once I’ve seen them.
Just saw Animatrix - might have even bought it, but it was sold out at a couple of stores I checked out – glad I didn’t purchase it. The best stories were already shown (Flight of the Osiris was easily the best) either with Dreamcatcher or for free online.
Some background filler to explain the kid in Reloaded and the Sentinel army, but that’s about it.
