John Woo's last interesting film before he sold out and moved to Hollywood so he could make a series of mediocre action films. Hard Boiled takes the police thriller and mixes it up with lots of Woo's famous over the top violence.
Chow Yun-fat is Inspector Tequila the hard boiled cop who is out to bust a triad gang smuggling guns, Tequila gets mixed up with an undercover cop, and the bullets and explosions begin to fly for almost two hours. Everything builds to the final big shootout in the hospital. For reasons to silly to be properly explained or understood the Triad is shipping arms out of the hospital.
No question Woo is a master of staging tremendous action scenes and shootouts. But credit should also be given to those amazing Hong Kong stuntmen who bring all these over the top scenes to life.
The other thing Hard Boiled has going for it is Chow Yun-Fat who really holds this film together. Without him this would simply be a collection of gun battles, as it is it's still one shoot out too many.
For all it excesses, this is still a dazzling action film.
126 minutes.
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