Evengyny
Thanks for the memories!
Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
paulclaassen
Action all the way, but I lost interest halfway through due to sensless killing of innocent people. How many people can die in one film?? Good photography and visuals, but afterwards even this did not matter anymore. Also a lot of plot flaws.
Paul Magne Haakonsen
"Hard Boiled" (aka "Lat sau san taam") is indeed the embodiment of the pinnacle of director John Woo's career and it is definitely one of the movies that helped define the action genre of the 1990s for the Hong Kong cinema.While realisms takes a backseat throughout the course of "Hard Boiled", then the action and adrenaline takes the lead, and those things do carry the movie quite well. Everything in the movie is so outrageous that realisms has no chance of bidding in with anything. Bullet count? Don't even bother, because that is non-existing here. So every single handgun and rifle has infinite ammo, well right until it becomes a pivotal scene for the storyline, then suddenly there is no more ammo.The movie starts out in a high pace and it doesn't really slow down. So that was a great accomplishment on behalf of director John Woo.The storyline, while it is not the most complex of storylines and plot ever to have been constructed, is actually entertaining and does have some nice turns to it. Was it predictable? It most certainly was. But it is the type of storyline that picks you up and carry you along for a great action-packed thrill ride.One of the more impressive things about "Hard Boiled" aside from the amazing action sequences, was the cast. They had Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung and Anthony Wong together in this movie; three of the major names in Hong Kong cinema."Hard Boiled" is actually a rather violent movie if you take a step back and look at it from an aesthetic viewpoint. There is a lot of violence in the movie and a lot of innocent bystanders do get gunned down throughout the course of the movie. But doesn't that sort of add some perverse sense of realism as well, because psychotic people would actually succumb to such wanton random violence and bloodshed.I have watched "Hard Boiled" many times, and return to it every now and again solely because of the impressive action and the ultra fast pace that there is to the movie. And "Hard Boiled" was actually one of the reasons why I have such a profound and deep love for the Hong Kong cinema.
Anssi Vartiainen
The problem with Hard Boiled isn't that it's a bad film in any way possible. The problem is that I've already seen The Killer and A Better Tomorrow, both of them earlier hit films from the director John Woo. Both of them are absolutely fantastic, and so is Hard Boiled in many ways. Except that nothing in it feels original. Woo is famous for popularizing the Hong Kong style of action in the West, but even his distinctive style can become repetitive.In Hard Boiled a loose cannon cop nicknamed Tequila, played by Chow Yun-fat because every John Woo main character is played by Chow Yun- fat, loses his partner in a gang shoot-out. He decides to take the matter of revenge into his own hands, which doesn't exactly please his superiors. And then the affair gets even more complicated when one of the most lethal assassins the gangs have turns out to have shifting loyalties. The plot is actually pretty good. The loyalties and morals always switching sides, you're never quite sure how the characters are going to react and it's all-around solid entertainment.Plus, the action works. The ending fight scene in the hospital drags a lot, but I cannot say that I didn't enjoy it. And the earlier fight scenes are all pure gold, exactly what you'd expect from John Woo.But, the story and the style do lack that edge. It feels more paint- by-numbers than it feels proper film-making. If this is the first John Woo film you'll see, you're probably going to enjoy it a lot. But he has done much better films, there's no denying that.
Mr-Fusion
Here's the pull-quote on the DVD for "Hard Boiled": "Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God." That line is just about as encapsulating as it gets for this movie. What's funny about it is that it's a spoken line in the actual movie (by Yun-Fat's Lieutenant, scoffingly), but it's just so perfect for what happens in the story.It's the same as with "The Killer"; we've seen all of the balletic gun battles in Hollywood action movies since this came out, but it's still a thrill to see John Woo at work. The shootouts in "Hard Boiled" - imitated by many over the years - are something else. Chow Yun-Fat is like a manically violent superhero when he's holding a gun, whether it's blasting away while sliding down a banister, taking on a warehouse full of goons single-handedly, or . . . well let's just say how he rescues a baby from a burning hospital is nuts.Great stuff.7/10
