Nah just yanking your doves. Last night I sat down and watched this film for the first time. It may of been the popping of the hard boiled cherry, but to me I was also losing my Woo virginity. Yeah I've seen plenty of his Hollywood output (Well, Mission Impossible 2 and Face/Off, they were both plenty enough for me) and hell I've even played through Strangehold, the 2007 video game sequel directed by Woo, it was damn good fun too. A clone of Max Payne sure, but then again Max Payne was basically a John Woo film converted into video game format. Art imitating life imitating art I guess.
Anyway, Chow Yun-Fat plays Tequila, a jazz flute playing officer and the star of the show and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai plays Tony/Alan, a reclusive undercover cop who makes origami cranes for everybody he kills. Both do damn fine jobs, Tequila filling the Dirty Harry badass role perfectly. Although I gots to say of the two, Alan is a much better developed character and far more interesting. Fat apparently championed for the scenes with John Woo's advice giving bartender to help expand Tequila's character. It doesn't work and those scenes only serve to slow down the pace momentarily.
I watched this on DVD, the 2004 Prism release and there is virtually no extra content apart from the trailers. The worst part was there was no option to watch the film in it's native language (I'm always for watching a film subtitled over being dubbed) So I was stuck with a god-damn-awful dub. Fat sounds like a Pierre Kirby rip off with the dubber unsure with what accent to roll with, so he goes with a strange English, American and I swear to Moses, an Australian accent. All this topped with the emotional delivery of a vending machine and it's just dreadful. Tony sounds pretty good though, in fact I forget it was dubbing a scarce few times. Everyone else ranges from sorta-okay to sorta-worst thing ever. Phillip Chan who plays cop boss Pang suffers the worst in this regard. There is a scene where Pang storms into Tequila's office and starts yelling and screaming at him for nearly blowing the case, Pang is great in this and the emotion in the dubber recording this a thousand miles away almost synchronize right up. On the flip side however, in the climatic hospital scene Pang is getting put in his place by Tequila's girlfriend Teresa (played by an actress named Teresa, for convenience sake I suppose) and his reaction is a simple "Uhh..." I swear I thought he burped.
The plot ain't important and I've skimped over it for that one reason. It's a simple cops and robbers tale. This is a film all about the action and it almost goes without saying, this is some of the greatest action scenes in any movie ever. Period. Sliding down the hand rail while firing two handguns and a buttload of enemies? Check. Massive warehouse battle scene between rival gangs? Check. Escaping an exploding hospital while carrying a newborn baby? Double check. It's all awesome and all insane.
I almost forgot, my favourite character is Phillip Kwok's Mad Dog. He's a cross between Javier Bardem from No Country For Old Men and Lou Diamond-Phillips from Young Guns. This fucker is brutal and fantastic. Honestly he could be one of my new favourite henchmen (Still second to Sticks from Out For Justice)
This isn't a perfect film though, the editing is a bit erratic and jumpy. The dialouge (Although to be fair it could just be this dubbed version) is terrible and while the jazz score can be great at times, it's a bit out of place. It doesn't connect to the action unfolding on the screen. Still I can't recommend this film enough. It has inspired me to check out John Woo's Hong Kong films before he went to make mediocre blockbusters. Although, if action movies ain't your thing, you are well and truly fucked with this one.
KRS
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