A Hard-boiled review in celebration of Tony Leung winning Lifetime Achievement Award from Venice International Film Festival

Yours truly pretty much came to the spotlight of this good community by talking shit about John Woo Presents Stranglehold. Guess it’s time to bring thing full circle by talking that game’s supposed prequel, 1992’s Hard-boiled in 2023. This year seem an eventful for the movie’s cast member Tony Leung, between an adultery scandal exposed and Life Achievement Award at Venice International Film Festival. So, I’m joining the parade by reviewing the action movie that marked the actor’s career pivot from comedic to dramatic.

The two Tonies

Regarding who are missing in Stranglehold compared to Hard-boiled, I would answer “the two Tonies” referring to aforementioned Leung and Anthony Wong. To be fair though, the characters played those 2 were probably both dead by the end of the movie.

Hard-boiled was the second time Leung being in a John Woo movie. The first time was Bullet to the Head, a pretty boilerplate Hong Kong crime drama with a harrowing venture to war-torn Vietnam in the mid of it. Leung switching between cool as cucumber and terrified by the horror of war marked him as a drama actor while he was only known for comedy before.

Wong’s is a sadder story. The man can be seen as the Robert De Niro of Hong Kong cinema, by which I mean someone with acting chops yet willing to get hands dirty with genre pieces. Then he just got to talk dirty of post-1997 Hong Kong politics on behalf of British colonists. Guess one call it civilization advancement since he simply got blacklisted while doing so in say the Qin dynasty would got you executed.

Anyway, back to the movie. Leung played an undercover cop named Alan while Wong played his mark, an illegal arms dealer named Johnny. Leung is praised for his performance as a struggling killer switching between obviously forced smiles and seemingly real tears when he was forced to kill his former employor and co-workers. As for Wong, the way Johnny trying to recruit Alan to his cause is certainly homoromantic.

John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow is known for having the good versus evil struggle between crooks. In some ways, Hard-boiled got rewritten into a good versus evil struggle between cops, with the bad guys being cop wannabes arms dealers who thirty for the power of a badge. “.38” was Johnny’s reaction to cops sneaking into his arsenal referring to the caliber of Hong Kong police’ service weapons. He does not exactly despise the badge just that he should hold it since he got the bigger guns.

Then of course this is a director famous for making crooks looking cool, so there is cool crook named Mad Dog in this one, signature being lighting cigarette with something not as common as match or lighter.

Leung and Wong would reunite a full decade after Hard-boiled in Infernal Affair, a movie partially inspired by Woo’s Face/Off. All the cops and crooks are alike drama, none of the science fictional bullshit. In that one, Leung played a much less romanticized version of undercover cop while Wong played a much meaner version of a handler, the type threats instead of comforts undercover agents. Less romanticized as in one can see Alan’s last appearance on his boat in Hard-boiled as ascent to Valhalla while in Infernal Affair Leung’s character was just dead with a bullet in his head.

Some punks do feel lucky

Another thing Stranglehold done fouled up was following Missing in Action 3’s step of sequel: introducing a love interest the audience never heard of, killing her off and the hero having to fight to protect his child he never met. With Chow Yun-Fat’s Tequilla being more of homage to Clint Eastwood, who most famous for men with no names, that’s certainly not the right way to do sequel. Or maybe they followed later installment in Dirty Harry series a little too blindly.

Chow’s Tequila would be his last role under Woo’s direction while Leung would be in Red Cliff, the historic epic marked Woo’s return to Chinese language cinema. The big T is also the only time Chow played a cop in Woo flicks yet this one might be the most murderous crooks of them all. The man shot suspects fleeting the scenes with deadly intention twice. The man pointed gun to the heads of suspects and pulled the trigger twice.

“Do you feel lucky, punk? DO YOU?” is a line said by Dirty Harry and the characters played by the two Tonies might answer “As a matter of fact, I do.” Johnny was harassed by the cop during the movie then Alan had to step in so the investigation can go on. Then in a truly “Did he shoot 5 or 6 rounds” situation, Tequilla pointed a gun to Alan and the latter return the favor in Woo flick fashion then the former pulled the trigger and turned out he shot six. Well, there is still more than a hour to go in this movie so they still needed both the spook and the grunt alive I guess.

Excuse my English

The name Tequilla was something a Chinese language review of Stranglehold had issue with, to which I say the writer certainly had not seen this movie with the original Cantonese track since the man was only referred to as Tequilla in the dialect. There was a joke in which Alan called him “Vodka” when talking to his handler.

In fact, when a Hong Kong citizen talking to residents in other parts of Guangdong province, the amount of English words in the former’s lingo might be hard to understand even though both are using the dialect known as Cantonese. I think it is to hide curses. The police officer, who is both Tequilla’s superior and Alan’s handler, ordered Chow’s character to stand down in Cantonese between saying “YOU SHUT UP” and “This is a FUCKING order” in Queen’s English.

Chow’s character being a loose can also be seen in his dating a woman outranks him in the police force. The woman is just called “madam” throughout the movie, even the SWAT members near the end of movie just call her that. How Hong Kong citizens pronounce the word would certainly separate them from the British colonists, since the latter would say it like saying “mum” while the former say it closer to the French pronouncing “Madame”. To think this part almost went to the Academy Award winning Michelle Yeoh would make me want to see that parallel reality.

Video game movies

One can say Face/Off was Woo finally comfortable with Hollywood since structure wise the 1997 flick is quite similar to Hard-boiled. Both movies have 4 major action set-pieces each and separate relatively evenly throughout the runtime, especially compared to Mission Impossible 2 confining all its gunplay to its second hour. One can say both got “player character” active in all the shootouts, whether it’s Chow Yun-fat as Tequilla or Sean Archer played by both John Travolta and Nicolas Cage (Those two are practically the Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung of mid-1990s’ Hollywood wouldn’t you say?).

Those action set-pieces all take place in different places that can be seen as video game levels: Face/Off has airport, prison, penthouse and sea-side church while Hard-boiled has tea-house, warehouse, pier and hospital. The third ones are both about hero being ambushed, and the one in Hard-boiled is rather brief. Though Hard-boiled’s hospital is arguably half of a Die-hard rip-off, taking up the whole second hour with lone heroes, hostages and the whole works.

Hard-boiled being a hasty production can be seen in the action. Wires are visible in scenes when people were blown away by explosions. Though environmental destruction of those days seem like a lost art now. Even John Wick Chapter 4’s top down shots seem lacking in that department. Whenever a shotgun was discharged in Hard-boiled, how some objects got blown up seemed to play more effort to set up than some people got killed.

People in Woo’s Hong Kong movies usually do not drop one-liners. No point talking to dead and what not. But this is a movie sold on Chow’s character saving a baby. So as mayhem taking place around the infant, Tequilla do speak softly to kid. One of those is after smash a glass and 2 round into a man, “Don’t look, kid. It’s rated 3.” I am guessing Woo and team looked at the amount of fake blood they need for this one then came up with the line.

Movie rating in Hong Kong is mixture of numbers and letters: 1 the same as G; 2A something covers PG and soft PG-13; 2B covers the hard edge of PG-13 and the softer side of R; then there is 3 unfortunately associated with pornography. I mean I got 4 Blu-ray discs on my shelf rate 3: both Raid movie plus John Wick 3 and 4. Raid 2 gave one a glimpse into porno shooting but let’s face it, violence is key. I’m more baffled that John Wick 2 was only rated 2B, someone must have blinked at that brain on pencil business.

I did feel that stairway grinding makes no sense in Stranglehold and after seeing Hard-boiled I knew why. The only grind-and-shoot in the movie was Tequilla laying on the stairway after dodged a bullet then proceed to shoot someone fleeting the scene in the back. Plot-armor is a funny thing in this movie, it tends to protect people in their front from pistol shots, though not shotgun shells. But shot in the back usually led to sever injury and even death. Then of course, no Woo movie is complete without dodge rolls.

Outro

This is one I started and restarted several times over the last 3 months. And it finally materialized after Leung held that trophy in Venice. Like I said in the beginning, I just wanted to bring full circle to a negative game review with my appreciation of a great action movie. Thank you for reading.