Hong Kong Action film

Since the 1970s, Hong Kong has been home to many of the world's most vigorous, innovative mass-showcase film industry. At its pinnacle it outperformed about every single western nation in number of movies released, ruled the east Asian market, and produced films (from John Woo's action pictures to the comic undertakings of Jackie Chan) that have excited global audience.

The primary Hong Kong movies promoted the wuxia style, stressing mystic aura and swordplay, however this pattern was politically suppressed in the 1930s and taken over by kung Fu films that showcased more rational hand to hand combative techniques, regularly highlighting society legend Wong Fei Hung. The 1970s saw a resurgence in kung Fu films amid the rise and sudden passing of Bruce Lee. He was followed in the 1980s by Jackie Chan—who used a lot of drama, risky tricks, and modern-day settings in real life movies—and Jet Li, whose legitimate wushu abilities spoke to both eastern and western group audience. The inventive work of directors and producers like Tsui Hark and John Woo introduced further verity (for instance, gunplay, sets of three, courageous carnage, and the powerful). Due to many people moving to Hollywood in the 1990s matched with the downfall of the industry.

Kung Fu movies were the contradiction to the wuxia films, emphasized more "authentic", down-to-earth and unarmed combat over the swordplay and mysticism of wuxia. The Hong Kong films were widely noticed in the west as “b” grade movies in urban theatres and television shows but were not widely respected. They were dubbed, recut and retitled to make them more western audience friendly with resulted into international popularity. Producer Tsui Hark facilitated the creation of John Woo's hugely violent movie A Better Tomorrow (1986). Woo's saga of cops and the gangsters combined choreography and violent gunfights with heightened emotional melodrama. This broke all-time box office record and jump-started the career of Chow Yun-fat, Woos favourite leading man and an overnight idol. Woo was one of the major reason for the rise of violent kung Fu movies using guns, also known as gun Fu movies in the west (Logan, 1995).

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ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: John Woo

1980s and into the early 1990s, several movies of almost the same genre were introduced by John Woo, consisting of triads and protagonists. This genre and its creators were accused by many critics of hugely glorifying the real-life triads whose involvement in the movie industry was ignominious (Dannen, Long, 1997). These developments in the movies reawakened the western interest and dominated the East Asian cinema industry. Kung Fu sub culture was already trending because of Jackie Chan and tsui Harks movies when Woo's The Killer (1989 had a successful but limited release in the U.S. which opened the floodgates for the genre. After the release of the movie Hard Boiled in 1992, Woo left for Hollywood and his 1997 film face/off established his place in Hollywood for his unique style. His movies are usually known for highly chaotic action sequence, Mexican standoffs, and frequent and frequent use of slow motion. Woo found the passion for movies and was heavily influenced by  Jean-Pierre Melville for his French movies. He used movies as a language and his voice since he was a shy and had difficulties with speech. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were a heavy influence on him and the last fight scene of the movies, the drawing of guns in the fights, was later used in his movies as well.

His movie, the killer gained him international recognition and became the most successful Hong Kong film in America to be released after Bruce lees, enter the dragon. But bullet in the head failed to find audience which resulted in failure to recover the large budget. The main reason for the lack of audience for this movie was because the audience failed to recognise or rather accept the political undertone used in the movie.

His last Hong Kong movie, hard boiled (1992), a police thriller, provided the same aesthetics as his older movies was a hit with the audience.

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THE KILLER

Director John Woo described the movie The Killer as being about honor and friendship, commonality between two people and a romantic poem.

Woo was fascinated with cartoons where the black bird and the white bird are always against each other but still friendly. The idea for this movie came from that observation. He used Li Ying and Ah Jong to illustrate it, where Ah Jong is the black bird and Li being the white bird. This reflection was shown in the movie including in scenes like the hospital sequence where Li and Ah are on the opposite side of the hospital hall and in the final battle where Li and Ah stand together in the fight with Wong.

The relationship between Li and Ah was called homoerotic by many critics but Woo responded by saying that stating "People will bring their own preconceptions to a movie .... If they see something in The Killer that they consider to be homoerotic then that is their privilege. It's certainly not intentional”

Woo also focused on animal symbolism in this movie. He filled the church with doves and pigeons which represented as the sprits of the people. He used the same dove symbolism for his other movies such as Hard Target and Face/Off. A cat is shown when Ah first meets Jennie at her home and Li’s partner finds Ah in her apartment. Cat is represented as omen which ruins and brings poverty to its inhabitants in the Chinese culture. Ah, Tsang, Li’s partner and Jennie meet negative outcome in this movie.

Tsui and Woo disagreed on using jazz songs in this movie and woo wanted the killer to play saxophone. Tsui disagreed that this idea for the Hong Kong audience would not be understandable. Woo wanted to “change the same kind of Chinese songs they play in all the Hong Kong films.”

The music was composed by Lowell Lo and edited by David Wu. The haunting vibraphone at the opening credits is a most reoccurring musical theme in this whole movie. During the final action scene, “Overturn” from Messiah by Georg Frideric Handel is played when the statue of virgin Mary is destroyed. David Wu had this idea because he felt that this would break the numbing effect of the kinetic violence.

This movie was first released in Taiwan in 1989 with 124 runtime minutes and then cut to the current runtime of 110 minutes to be released in Hong Kong in 1989 (Yau, 2001)). This move was “much better” with the cut but it still ranked ninth in the 1989 Hong Kong box office.

"I like doves. They look so beautiful, like a woman. For me they represent peace and love and purity. And sometimes they're seen as the messengers of God, so they're important to me because I'm a Christian." John Woo

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BULLET IN THE HEAD

Woo and Tsui Hark had a falling out and Bullet in the head, which was supposed to be a prequel to A Better Tomorrow, was stopped.  After the falling out with his partnership with Tsui, Woo was having trouble finding backing for his films. Tsui had told everyone that Woo was hard to work with and due to Tsuis’ influence in the industry, Woo was virtually blacklisted. He had to finance the whole movie out of his own pocket.

This movie incorporated his reaction to the Tiananmen Square incident in Beijing in 1989. It did not do well in Hong Kong because the Hong Kong audience did not like the reference to that incident in the movie riot scenes. Woo was deeply hurt that it affected the people badly, but he also believed that the Chinese people should react to the movie and not hide from it.

The Vietnam exterior of this movie was shot in Thailand and the interiors were shot in Hong Kong. The nightclub shootout was too expensive to be shot in Thailand. The Vietnamese camp raid and helicopter shots were taken from stock footage of the Vietnam war and some were also from other Vietnamese films.

This movie was a taken positively but it was said it was reviewed as obvious and that you wouldn't miss any important facts if you missed the first half of the movie. 

"For my own films, I would like to see 'Bullet in the Head' remastered. The original cut was actually almost three hours."- John Woo

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HARD BOILED

John Woos Hard Boiled was his last movie in Hong Kong before his transition to Hollywood. It was released in 1993 in Hong Kong and had a positive reaction from the people. It was not commercially successful and Woos previous films such as The Killer. the wester reception of this movie however was much more positive, and the critics claimed that this movie had the best action scenes ever filmed. It was originally developed in 1990, Woo said that he wanted to glorify the police instead of the gangsters like in his other movies. He wanted to make his own Dirty Harry detective movie in Hong Kong style. He didn’t want his movie to be as his previous film styles, but he told the actors that he wanted the movie to have an “edgy thriller”.

Woo was a fan of jazz music as seen in his previous movies and he used the same jazz style in this movie as well.  This movie also featured other songs such as “Hello” by Lionel Richie and traditional songs like “Mona Lisa”. He wanted to suggest that character Tony was a pen pal to Teresa. He also wanted the music to be dubbed by the actors which he said was convenient and there was no worry about setting other sound elements.

"When I made 'Hard Boiled,' I had no idea that it would be released to an international audience. I just wanted to make a film to team up my two favorite actors, Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat."- John Woo.

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In the reception of the movie, Woo said that the western audience loved the movie The Killer, but the movie lovers liked Hard Boiled more. Salisbury said that Woos Hong Kong films were not as inventive and stylized as hard boiled.

Althoygh all these movies are of the same genre that is action, crime and thriller, they focus on three completly different type. there are many similarities in all these movies but there are also very subtle differences throughout the plot lines. The Killer movie is about gangsters and glorification of gangsters, Bullet in the Head is about three friends who turn to gangters and, Hard Boiled is about two police officers, where one is undercover as a gangster. so we can see that the movies focuses on gangsters but in The Killer, Woo focuses mainly on the glorification of gangster life, where an hired assassin leaves the life of crime for love. this shows that there was a romance factor to the movie as well. In the Bullet in the Head movie, three friends end up almost dead due to greed for money. and in his last tribute to the movies in Hong Kong he focused on the glorification of police officers that is the triumph of good guys over the bad guys.

These movies were very intresting to watch and even if you want to watch these movies critically, you can easily see the differences and similarites between the same genre.