Hard Boiled (1992)

Is Hard Boiled the peak of pre-CGI-enhanced action cinema? When you sit down to watch it, or rewatch it after a gap of far too many years, it soon becomes hard to argue against that position. Considering how beloved it remains by action movie fans, I seriously considered not even writing a review. What can be said about Hard Boiled that hasn't been said already? Nothing, but I still want to add my own praise to the mass of positive words you can already read about it elsewhere.

Chow Yun-Fat plays 'Tequila', a good cop with a very good aim. Others say that he never wastes a bullet, but that claim may be tested when he is surrounded by more and more gun-toting criminals looking to push him right off the end of this mortal coil. The head villain is Johnny (Anthony Wong), but he's helped out by a deadly killer named Mad Dog (Phillip Kwok) and a young man (Tony Leung) who might be keeping a big secret that could compromise a lot of people.

With a screenplay by Barry Wong and Gordon Chan, Hard Boiled has everything you could expect from this kind of movie in this time period. There's our hero clashing with the Chief Superintendent (Philip Chan). There's some awkward comedy, and relationship tension between our hero and the woman he is involuntarily separated from (Teresa, played by Teresa Mo). And you have the moral fluidity of the heroes and villains, depending on what is at stake and who is caught up in the middle of the action. And there are guns. Of course. Lots and lots of guns.

The influence of John Woo, often referred to as the father of "bullet ballet", cannot be under-estimated, and Hard Boiled is a modern action movie source text that so many other moments of great cinema stem from. The two main stars are suitably bright, but they're also happy to share scenes with the actual main star of the show, all of the weaponry and firepower that Woo presents in a number of increasingly impressive and audacious set-pieces. 

Aside from Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung, both unable to be any cooler unless they were dipped in liquid nitrogen, it's a pleasant surprise to find Wong and Kwok able to make any kind of impression at all. The fact that they both manage to be as riveting as the leads, albeit in very different ways, is downright miraculous. I cannot say the same about Chan or Mo, but they do well enough with what they're given, particularly while playing their parts in the third act.

It's far from perfect, a lot of the less violent moments fall a bit flat, but when moving from one gunfight to the next . . . Hard Boiled is very hard to top. In fact, I may not see an action movie as good as this until I check out another John Woo movie from this part of his career. And I hope to be doing that quite soon.

9/10

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The Seventh Curse (1986)

Starting this review feels surprisingly daunting. As wild and enjoyable as it is, The Seventh Curse is also one of the most absolutely bonkers movies I have watched in some time. I want to sell it to other people, but I don’t want to spoil any of the treats contained within.

Let’s try a very basic plot summary. We get a lot of exposition in an extended flashback sequence. Dr. Yuen (Chin Siu-ho) is working away in the middle of a jungle area when he encounters a group of people conducting a ritual sacrifice. Not having any of it, Dr. Yuen interrupts the ritual and saves the woman who was due to be sacrificed. This is when he is given a blood curse, a series of explosive wounds that will harm him before the seventh results in death. The woman he saved manages to buy him a year of extra time, but that year is almost up. Dr. Yuen has to return to the jungle and defeat the powerful sorcerer who cursed him.

None of the above paragraph really gets to the heart of how truly mad The Seventh Curse is, although I hope you can imagine a lead character suddenly being pained by an explosive squid giving the impression that his body is being destroyed by strategic wounds signifying a countdown to death. There are some great action moments, the kind of sequences stuffed full of people you just know hurt themselves for the sake of the cinematic spectacle provided, and practical effects that make you think this was co-created by Frank Henenlotter.

Although I have seen a few other movies from writers Wong Jing and Yuen Gai-chi, this is my first from director Lam Ngai Kai. Considering I own at least one other title from him, and have already had The Cat recommended to me numerous times, it certainly won’t be my last. Kai gives equal time to every mad idea written into the script, ensuring that any weaknesses are overlooked in favour of the constant sense of, to use the technical term, whatthefuckery.

Siu-ho isn’t the strongest, or most charismatic, lead, but he is being followed by a character who is played by Maggie Cheung, which allows her to shine in a way that otherwise wouldn’t have worked if the Siu-ho had been dominating the screen. Chow Yun-Fat also has a supporting role, but it’s far from his best onscreen action, and you get Dick Wei and the brilliantly-named Elvia Tsui joining in with the fun, the latter especially entertaining as the evil sorcerer.

I don’t think this is one of my best reviews, apologies for that, and it can be harder to write about these films when you find it impossible to truly convey the full experience. Because a lot of this could be viewed as bad. The plotting is ridiculous, the characters are a bit weak, and people get themselves out of perilous situations in ways that are, let’s not pretend otherwise, frankly preposterous. But that all becomes part of the fun. As soon as you realise how the film is playing out then you can decide whether to go along with it or not. If you decide not to then that’s your loss. I had fun with it, and just writing about it now has made me want to revisit it already (partially because some of the scenes I have remembered already feel like the product of some wild fever-dream).

7/10

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