If one hasn’t seen many Heroic Bloodshed films from the eighties and nineties one probably has the impression that these films are low-brow entertainment, but there is more here than meets the eye. Filmmakers such as Ringo Lam and Taylor Wong were able to construct some of the most elaborately choreographed action sequences ever put onto film, utilizing some of the most cutting edge editing techniques. Yet, no filmmaker has ever been able to take this genre to the heights director John Woo did between 1986 and 1992.
John Woo’s first “heroic bloodshed” film was A Better Tomorrow (1986), a film about brothers on either side of the law and how they must work to redeem themselves in each other’s eyes, which was also the first of many films Woo would make starring Chow Yun Fat. A Better Tomorrow established most of the significant conventions that would appear in almost all of Woo’s subsequent films. Woo’s films would very often center around stories of revenge and redemption, fleshed out with gory shoot outs that are photographed in slow motion, with an elder character who recalls “the old days” when gangsters followed a code of honor, and with a love interest who passes from one friend to another when one of the friend’s is believed dead.
When films such as City On Fire (1987), City War (1988), and Full Contact (1992) began adopting Woo’s style as their own Woo’s own films began entering maturity; focusing more on highly stylized and meticulously choreographed scenes of gun play in addition to a new emphasis on character. The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992) navigate Woo’s popular style with an emphasis shift, utilizing a dramatic arc designed as a character study of the relationship between two men and the ramifications of their contradictory personalities. Unlike their counterparts in America, such as Cobra (1986), The Terminator (1984) or Die Hard (1988), John Woo’s films are genuinely interested in understanding the psychology of his action heroes, even if this analysis he has undertaken manifests itself in a highly exaggerated form. The films of his contemporaries working in America within a similar genre dominated by “super cops” and “honorable hoods” cannot move their narratives beyond the necessities of the genre, relegating any meaningful comment on violence or the “honor of men” to the peripherals of the film, preferring guaranteed escapism to insight.
A Better Tomorrow marks the beginning of John Woo’s “classic” period. I don’t know if I would love this film as much if my brother and I hadn’t grown up on Heroic Bloodshed Films. But that fact remains that A Better Tomorrow is one of the major touchstones for Hong Kong cinema and a must-see for any cinephile.
