To commemorate a year passing since Viva Video! closed its doors forever the Bryn Mawr Film Institute hosted a 35mm screening of John Woo’s Hard Boiled (1992). The event is one of an ongoing series curated by the former staff of the Philadelphia area’s last great video store. The screening of Hard Boiled brought together members of the Viva Video! community once again to share in one of the great action spectacles. Viva Video! was always about creating a space for local cinephiles to meet and discuss film with one another safely and positively and the screening at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute was no different. After a year the absence left in the community by Viva Video! is still profoundly felt. Cinephile culture has lost a haven for physical media and a home away from home.
Hard Boiled, with all of its thrills, was an ideal choice to bring people together. Not everyone at the screening had belonged to the Viva Video! community while the rental shop was still in operation but they’ve become honorary members now. John Woo’s last great heroic bloodshed film is a cult favorite that provided a common ground for all present. Some, like my self, were there seeing the film for the fifteenth time while others were experiencing Hard Boiled anew. However I doubt anyone present had seen the film on 35mm before. And even though there were some technical difficulties half way through the film, no one’s spirits seemed to diminish. We all laughed at the same moments and gasped at others. Hard Boiled proved itself to be as affecting as ever just as its medium proved again that the cinema is the great art for social unity.
Only John Woo could have made an action epic wrought with the legacy of Vietnam and the anxieties of re-unification (between Hong Kong and China). The careening camera moves, reflexive touches, and rapid montage of the exterior scenes during the hospital siege of the film’s climax evoke the terrors of war that made up John Woo’s masterpiece Bullet In The Head (1990). Hard Boiled reframes those nightmare visions of mass collateral damage as part of the action movie, revealing the darker elements of those narratives and the motivations behind the schadenfreude the viewer indulges in while watching the film. In a film of big explosions, deafening gunfire, excessive gore, and bold, homoerotic gestures this device is subtle, hidden beneath a cavalcade of escapist antics.
The heart of Hard Boiled lies with the relationship between the vengeful cop played by Chow Yun-fat and the undercover operative played by Tony Leung. Theirs is a bond of honor as much as it is a bond born out of shared terror and trauma as they navigate a city terrorized by Triads. The relationship between these two men, the biggest stars in Hong Kong, follows the same fundamental trajectory that can be seen in Woo’s earlier films The Killer (1989) and A Better Tomorrow (1986). The inspiration behind these masculinist partnerships stems from Woo’s deep admiration for Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967).
There’s much ado regarding Woo’s genius for staging and photographing fight choreography in mind blowing set pieces but not enough is said about his ability to cut his films to optimize the affect of his images. Hard Boiled is a masterpiece of editing. The tension is always building as narrative threads intertwine. It’s clear that Woo shot the film knowing exactly how he wanted to cut every sequence. The ballet of emotions and tonal variance Woo choreographs in the editing room equals his ability to stage a fight. These set pieces are purely visual storytelling; it is cinema as it was meant to be.
Nothing in Woo’s career up until that point equaled the scope of Hard Boiled. It’s obvious that for Woo Hard Boiled was his ticket to Hollywood. Its high production values, moving story, and unique spectacle made Hard Boiled superior to any action film Hollywood was making at that time. It announced Woo’s arrival as a major international filmmaker and became an instant modern classic. This is how those in attendance at Viva Video’s screening of Hard Boiled experienced the film.
