Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A cop who loses his partner in a shoot-out with gun smugglers goes on a mission to catch them. In order to get closer to the leaders of the ring he joins forces with an undercover cop who's working as a gangster hitman. They use all means of excessive force to find them.
Hard Boiled is John Woo's magnum opus of gun-fu action cinema. The cinematography and action choreography are genuinely extraordinary — the Maple Garden teahouse opening and the legendary hospital finale (a near-unbroken 35-minute single-building siege) represent some of the most technically accomplished and viscerally thrilling sequences ever committed to film. Its novelty is unquestionable: it essentially codified the 'heroic bloodshed' genre and influenced global action filmmaking for decades. The ending (the hospital sequence) is a landmark of sustained action filmmaking. Acting from Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung is stylishly competent but not dramatically deep. The plot is the weakest link — thin and functional, serving primarily as connective tissue between set pieces, with character development taking a clear back seat to spectacle.