Lat sau san taam aka Hard Boiled (1992)

I don't remember exactly how it came up (I think there's a blog somewhere last year where I mentioned it), but I gave Ryan Kenner at Movies in the Attic my list of the top 10 films of the 1990s and asked him what his were. I was very surprised to see Hard Boiled on that list, not because I didn't think it was amazing, but because I'd always thought it came out in 1988. Somewhere along the line I obviously got some erroneous information, so I took a look at my list again, and right away, Hard Boiled was slotted in at number 6. It's that good.

Hard Boiled is about a cop, played by Chow Yun-Fat, who tends to drink a lot, but is still very good at what he does. When his partner dies in a too-sweet gun fight, he's on the warpath to apprehend those responsible. Things take an interesting turn, when someone he thinks is a bad guy turns out to be a fellow cop in deep cover. Both guys are used to being lone heroes, but they have to learn how to work together if they want to come out on top.



With our Bad Lieutenant post, we now have two of my top ten films of the 90s posted on here (that film being my number 7). Hard Boiled is really that good. What makes it better than The Killer for me, is that it's something more. While The Killer was a fantastic merging of action and drama in a way that seldom works, Hard Boiled dialed down the drama, but turned the action into high art. This was Fellini, Goddard, Bergman, or Kurosawa, but it was done with guns-- and done with guns in a way I can't imagine any of those or any other great director pulling off. This was what people thought they were watching with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The question then is, how did we get from Hard Boiled, to Hard Target? Why hasn't someone whose Hong Kong films put him up there with some of the best living directors, like Scorsese, Almodóvar, and Eastwood, not been able to replicate that success here in the States. I think Almodóvar might be the best comparison, because he's stayed in his native Spain, while Woo left Hong Kong. Just like I can't see any American actors delivering on the uniquely European and Spanish takes Almodóvar has on sex and gender relations, I can't see any American actors going at an action scene with the same kind of intensity that Chow Yun-Fat or any other Hong Kong actors do. I mean, I love Tom Cruise, but he's no Chow Yun-Fat. Neither are Nicolas Cage or John Travolta. Or even Dolph Lundgren. Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood have much more creative freedom than Woo does, but they also don't make films that are as physically taxing on their actors, which means they don't have to worry about SAG reps or producers or insurance people nixing things that might put their stars in danger.



When we think about great directors, we also think of great actors who are often associated with those directors. Max von Sydow and Ingmar Bergman. Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa. Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. With all of those directors, they moved onto other actors, and though they may not have captured that same magic, they still made classics. With Woo, though, he hasn't duplicated that form he had with Chow Yun-Fat-- and it could be said that other than Full Contact, Chow Yun-Fat hasn't really hit many home runs either. I'm not much of a video game guy (that's not true, rather I'm a literal video game addict, so I keep them away from me so I can function like a (somewhat) normal member of society), but I'm interested to see how Stranglehold is, because it's their first reunion since Hard Boiled.

Before I do another paragraph on the DVD version of the film I watched, I think I need to get back into a little DTVC bad action and leave the whole indie art house thing behind for a sec. As a huge action fan, this is pretty much as good as it gets. Hard Boiled is, as I mentioned above, action as high art. Not only did Woo not let the plot get in the way of the action, he made the plot the action. The dialog was the action, the story was told in action-- everything was action. As much as this is a great movie quality wise, action wise, it's like I won the Golden Ticket and was walking through Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This is one of those movies that really works for both the mindless action crowd and the indie art house crowd, which is perfect for me, because I belong to both.



Like The Killer, I went with the Criterion cover image, and like with The Killer, I watched the Dragon Dynasty version. You can get the Hard Boiled Criterion used for much cheaper than The Killer, $15-20, but again, being released in 1998, the Dragon Dynasty one might be better. It's a two-disc set (which I have only checked out the main disc of), and a pretty decent transfer, so I think getting Hard Boiled on Criterion is another case of doing it as a collector's item.

If you haven't seen this yet, even more than The Killer, it's a must. This isn't just Woo at it's finest, this is the art of cinema at its finest. Get it on Netflix, buy it at your local electronics shop, just check it out. As a side note, I won't be covering the Better Tomorrow series during this go round of Hong Kong films, so until we get back to them somewhere down the road, you can check out what Kenner thinks about them at his site (link is to the specific post).

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104684/