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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

John Woo

  
 
Margin Walker
06:34 / 16.06.02
So John Woo's latest film, Windtalkers, is finally out. I like him as a director, but Windtalkers isn't a great film. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly "Full Metal Jacket." Hell, it's not even "Saving Private Ryan." And I'm sure it's hard to believe, but according to this Washington Post article, the script's been abridged & edited in order to get military aid for the film.

If you want to talk about Windtalkers, fine. But I'd rather hear what y'all got to say about his other movies. Got any favorites? Myself, I liked The Killer & Hard Boiled & would like to see some opinions on his other Hong Kong films. And just for the sake of argument, does anybody here love any of his American films? I mean, can any one here say "I loved Hard Target!" and actually mean it?
 
 
Thjatsi
07:22 / 16.06.02
When people talk about John Woo's Hong Kong work, I get the impression that it's akin to a religious experience for them. For me, however, they're just decent to above average action films. I liked Hard Boiled, but it was slow as hell in parts. I would have prefered a little less oboe playing and a few more gunfights. The romance in The Killer was annoying and sappy as hell, and A Better Tomarrow is filled with boring parts like the ex-convict trying to get a job.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't demand non-stop killing from a movie, but the actionless portions of John Woo's movies just don't grab me. The downside of this is that it makes the parts with the action not as interesting. I'm generally thinking, "Oh look, person X killed person Y in a completely awesome way", but I sort of don't care, because neither character really interested me to begin with.

That said, I have to admit that Face Off is my favorite action movie ever. For some reason, I could relate to the characters in a way that I couldn't with any of his other Hong Kong or American films.
 
 
The Strobe
07:29 / 16.06.02
I saw The Killer before I saw Hard Boiled, and that has a lot of influence on me. I found Hard Boiled alright, but nothing spectacular; it was certainly a bit uneven, and lurched from action sequence to action sequence. When they came they were great, but some of it seemed a little uneven, you know? It's still better than most US action movies, but...

...it's not the Killer. Which is just masterful? Sappy, over-the-top-romance? That's the point. It's not drama, it's melodrama, it's not theatre, it's opera. Every emotion is multiplied by ten - anger, love, sadness. Primary colours stuff here. And some of the action sequences are just superb - the church at the end, that opening kick of the table. Whilst the mutual respect the Killer and the Cop find for each other may be a little overdone even in the operatic world, it all works just so perfectly that I honestly don't mind. There are two types of people who've seen this movie, though: those who just laugh when John and Jenny crawl past each other at the end, and those who find it affecting. I'm in the latter camp - it's perfectly tragic. And indeed, the whole film works superbly as a tragedy.

I'll stop here and wait for Knight's Move to take over...
 
 
videodrome
14:30 / 16.06.02
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't demand non-stop killing from a movie, but the actionless portions of John Woo's movies just don't grab me. The downside of this is that it makes the parts with the action not as interesting. I'm generally thinking, "Oh look, person X killed person Y in a completely awesome way", but I sort of don't care, because neither character really interested me to begin with.

I think this is a pretty common response to most of his Hong Kong films. There's cultural dissonance, watching HK films from a western perspective, because there's a bunch of elements that seem to be necessary for a HK film that would very rarely show up in a 'western' film, except of course in some actual Westerns. The melodrama is the best example, specifically the way Woo uses it to build relationships between male characters. Of course there's always a cultural gap when watching films from other countries but his films, being of the action genre and obviously influenced by American films of a certain period, seem to lead audiences into thinking that cultural gap ain't gonna be there. I really like watching his HK films with that dissonance in mind, looking for the different ways Chinese culture expects stories to be told. And of course, I think that cultural gap is more noticable if you're watching these films as an American. But for any Western audience, there's cultural barriers to be leapt before parts of each film can really be digested.

As for favorites, The Killer was my first experience and remains near the top of the list. But I like Bullet In The Head because it's so out there, taking to an extreme all the emotional string-pulling you'd expect to find in a war film. His American output has been dodgy, largely because of the missing HK storytelling elements. While the action is there, the infrastructure that supports it isn't, and without the operactic melodrama, the operactic action seems a little silly. I think that's why Face Off works better than the other American films - it's so ridiculous that nothing seems out of context. If you buy it initially, the whole thing works.

There's a bootleg cut of Hard Target, been floating around for years, with anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes of extra footage depending upon which one you find. Supposed to be better, but I can't say I'm very interested in tracking it down. Sadly, I feel the same way about seeing Windtalkers.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
17:45 / 16.06.02
I liked his Hong Kong movies, but I came to them very late after all of the tricks in them had been stolen by other directors...but I have enjoyed his American films. Yes, I can honestly say that I liked Broken Arrow, Face/Off and MI:2 without any irony. In fact, I saw MI:2 at a drive in and can say it was the prefect movie for that environment, a bit of exploitation, lots of Big Screen doings and a final action sequence that played well.

Hard Target was the best Van Damme movie, which is like saying it was the best shit sandwich I had ever eaten, but when you come to the US, you have to prove you can put together a competent movie for the studio system before they give you the keys to the car. Just ask Jackie Chan, who tried cracking the US market for almost 15 years before he broke through.
 
 
paw
19:32 / 16.06.02
i actually don't think hard target is that bad. theres some good action shots or at least i thought so the last time i saw it several years ago. Love the scene where van damme roundhouses the cigar out of the mouth of one of the rich gun toting thrill seekers. yeah and yer man bishop from alien, lance h. i think, is great, especially in the shot where he's smiling maniacally at his own ability to play the piano.
 
 
paw
19:34 / 16.06.02
Solitaire rose:

Hard Target was the best Van Damme movie, which is like saying it was the best shit sandwich I had ever eaten

great line rose
 
 
The Strobe
22:15 / 16.06.02
When I heard Woo was doing MI2 I bounced around.

When I heard MI2 was a PG-13, my heart sank.

MI2 was awful. Silly, not confusing in any way, and awkwardly edited action sequences. Not good. At all.
 
 
Knight's Move
12:40 / 19.06.02
Bullet in the Head is probably his best film. Even in the glorious delerium that is the bad guy's last moment it combines drama and humour in a bizzare way. Unfortunately American Woo is emasculated. The joy of HK films is that people can do whatever they like. Good guys can die. So can kids. And anyone else you want to as well. The good guys don't always win, or at least they hadly ever have unqualified success. Things go wrong all the time. It's somewhat refreshing. But America requires happy endings, people don't get to do their own stunts, films have to be planned and budgeted so there is less scope for the HK way of deciding on the spot what they want to do. Hence Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and MI2. I quite like Face/Off but I like it as a great Hollywood action flick, it's not a great Woo film. Chow's not in it for one thing.

Basically A Better Tomorrow is brilliant. Fully realised characters, excellent resteraunt shoot out, musings on life, intricate Chinese beliefs about honour, face, etc. Less of the sometimes irritating farce moments and annoying cloying bits of some of this stuff. It is also the movie that really kicked of the whole gun fu Heroic Bloodshed genre. It is one of his finest works ever. Interestingly, the twin gun thing was brought in first because Woo couldn't think of any other way that Chow would have enough bullets to kill everyone in the room, he took it from old Hollywood westerns in which anyone who was anyone walked about with two guns, Hollywood of course, not having any knowledge of its own past took that image and made it famous in American cinema so the current love of twin guns is not Holywood ripping of HK, but actually the other way round.

The Killer is brilliant. I'm with Paleface about the ending, I think its excellent tragic farce - I wrote about it in one of my exams in fact. The scene when the cop and killer point guns at each other whilst being served tea by the blind singer is superb. The shoot outs are phenomenal - they are the most polished in all of his work, although the Hardboiled ones are more...huge is the only word I can think of there.

Heroes Shed No Tears is interesting if you can track it down. The film just before A Better Tomorrow it is set in Vietnam and features explosions, torture and death as a bunch of mercenaries attempt to capture a druglord. Also, Once a Thief. This does get a touch cloying in the love triangle bits but...the heists are cool, the final twist about Chow is great, the villain throwing playing cards is nice (used in Return of the God of Gamblers as well).

Just don't watch A Better Tommorow 2. Woo disowned it except for the last ten minutes which is a delerious fight in a building with whitewashed walls between three gangsters and the big bad guy's mooks. The film itself is terrible. Sickly, dragging, just plain weak. Until Chow puts back on the old trenchcoat you are left begging for him to finally snap and kill a lot of people. When he does snap though it rocks particuarly when Ti Lung goes apeshit with the samurai sword and Chow and the evil assassin have a face off and then slide guns across the floor to each other. The rest of the film is bad though.
 
 
paw
16:03 / 19.06.02
cheers for the recommendations knight. Always wanted to explore the hK genre but never knew where to start. Off-topic a little do any of youse remember the scene in True Romance where Slater's watching these two asian guys on T.V shoot the crap out of each other. it's obviously? a h.k film but which is it? it looks pretty good
 
 
paw
16:04 / 19.06.02
i really need to get new printer ink, as usual theres so many threads i wanna have a hard copy of
 
 
tSuibhne
17:11 / 19.06.02
In the commentary for Drunken Master, one of the guy's talking tells the story of how he got into martial arts flicks. Seems, he was at the Marvel office bitching about how no one can make good super hero movies. The people he was bitching to, took him toa theater in town, that happened to be showing Drunken Master. He then went into this bit about how martial arts flicks are better super hero movies then the super hero movies that have been created.

I think a similiar thing can be said about Woo's work. Which acctually lead me to an epiphany of sorts. Woo, directing a super hero flick, preferably something pulpy like The Shadow or something similiar. I think it could deffinetly work.
 
 
Knight's Move
02:03 / 20.06.02
If you want to get into HK sean you should check out another thread here I hope. Has quite a few good suggestions.

Also apparently the film on the tv in True Romance was in fact the end of A Better Tomorrow 2. Still not a good reason to watch it though.
 
 
cusm
15:13 / 20.06.02
I've seen his HK and US films, and I'll have to say that while I've enjoyed the US films, its just not the same. It feels more like Woo being given something to work with and do what he can with, rather than letting him actually run the film. The seem more like films John Woo worked on rather than films by John Woo, if you follow that.

The one that did seem like him doing his own schticks was Blackjack, which was just awful. Cool in that it was lots of crazy action with a hero that could kill people with playing cards, but it was made for the USA Network and really showed. Its just bad, but it is a John Woo movie, you can tell that much.
 
 
This Sunday
15:53 / 12.12.06
Someone recently told me that both John Woo and Chow Yun Fat had recently declared heading away from Hollywood permanent-like, if something really decent doesn't happen by 2008 or such. Having recently got around to actually watching 'Anna and the King' and re-watching 'MI-2' before making an apology watch of 'The Killer' and 'An Autumn's Tale' I can believe it.

Now, I have to admit, I can't think of a John Woo American film I've been absolutely unable to stomach at all, and Chow Yun Fat manages to outclass most of his co-stars in just about every States-side picture he's done, but really, we know they can do better, they know they can, so what's the deal? How fucked up is that this amazing director has his balletic fights and lovely melodramas butchered down to incomprehensible and unappealingly abrupt? This excellent actor who not just oozes presence and has some of the best little emoting notions ever on screen... and he's generally cast as the sidekick to an annoying whiteboy who can't act his way out of an improved paper sack?
 
  
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