Hard Boiled (1992)

A tough-as-nails cop teams up with an undercover agent to shut down a sinister mobster and his crew.

Director:

John Woo

Writers:

John Woo (story), Barry Wong (screenplay)

Stars:

Yun-Fat Chow, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Teresa Mo

3 wins & 4 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Yun-Fat Chow	...	Insp. 'Tequila' Yuen
Tony Chiu-Wai Leung	...	Alan (as Tony Leung)
Teresa Mo	...	Teresa Chang
Philip Chan	...	Supt. Pang
Phillip Chung-Fung Kwok	...	Mad Dog (as Kwok Chun-Feng)
Anthony Chau-Sang Wong	...	Johnny Wong (as Anthony Wong)
Hoi-San Kwan	...	Mr. Hoi (Guest star) (as Kwan Hoi Sang)
Wei Tung	...	Foxy (Guest star) (as Tung Wai)
Bowie Lam	...	Ah Lung / Benny
Meng Lo	...	Lonny (as Johnson Law)
Bobbie Au-Yeung	...	Lionheart (as Bobby Au Yeung)
Shui-Ting Ng	...	Ah Chung (as Ng Shui-Tung)
Kong Lau	...	Hospital Director
Wai-Sun Lam	...	Hitman 1
Benny Lam	...	Hitman 2

Storyline

Mobsters are smuggling guns into Hong Kong. The police orchestrate a raid at a teahouse where an ace detective loses his partner. Meanwhile, the two main gun smugglers are having a war over territory, and a young new gun is enlisted to wipe out informants and overcome barriers to growth. The detective, acting from inside sources, gets closer to the ring leaders and eventually must work with the inside man directly.

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Plot Keywords:

gun fu | informant | gunfight | long take | partnership | 

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Taglines:

From the director of "Hard Target" and "The Killer".

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for pervasive violence and some language

Did You Know?

Trivia

This was John Woo's last Hong Kong film before going to Hollywood. According to the Dragon Dynasty commentary, it was never meant to be Woo's last film there. It was somewhat successful in Hong Kong but not as successful as Woo's earlier films and it was at this point that the Heroic Bloodshed genre which Woo and a couple of directors were famous for was coming to an end as the Hong Kong audience were more interested in comedies, etc. However, when John had heard that this movie had extreme positive reactions from the American audience (which was rare at the time), that was when he made the decision to go to Hollywood. From there, he made his first American film Hard Target (1993) and continued with Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Windtalkers (2002), and Paycheck (2003). In 2007, he went back to China to direct his two-part epic period film Red Cliff (2008) and Red Cliff II (2009) and produce and co-direct Reign of Assassins (2010).

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Goofs

Throughout the film, characters fire more bullets than their guns would realistically allow without reloading, John Woo actually explained that he does this on purpose because reloading slows down the action scene.

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Quotes

Tequila: You're really full of shit. The toilet's over there.

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Alternate Versions

The German Video-Release, although rated FSK18, is heavily cut. The German TV version (rated FSK 16) is missing half an hour of footage - including almost all the bullet hits.

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Connections

Featured in Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie (2011)

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Soundtracks

Mona Lisa
Written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston
Sung by Teresa Mo and Philip Chan

User Reviews

Brilliant

"Hey!" Chow Yun Fat says, covering a baby's eyes. "X-Rated action!" He's not wrong: Hard Boiled is a film clearly not afraid to embrace its genre's excesses. While most modern action films (Smokin' Aces for one) aspire to some sort of grand intelligence while providing shoot-outs and explosions, this film is a reminder of times when action films suffered no such pretensions.

Crowds of people are gunned down without explanation and the smallest things explode for little or no reason. The bad guys are massively exaggerated cutthroat caricatures and the good guys never miss. Scenes of Fat and Leung running down corridors are inexplicably shot in slow motion. And, for all of these reasons, it is amazing. It's fast, it's exciting, and it never lets up.

Hard Boiled is loud, exciting, and, thanks to quite terrible dubbing and a ludicrous early 90's soundtrack, often unintentionally hilarious. It is a film that places entertainment firmly ahead of plausibility and logic, and is quite frankly awesome for it.

Details

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese English

Release Date:

16 April 1992 (Hong Kong)

Also Known As:

Hard Boiled

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Box Office

Budget:

$4,500,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Golden Princess Film Production Limited, Milestone Pictures, Pioneer LDC

Technical Specs

Runtime:

128 min 92 min (cut) 149 min (uncut)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1