Hard boiled

The last of John Woo’s hong kong films, hard boiled doesn’t quite do justice to the genre that Woo himself pioneered. At over two hours long, and with too many scenes that are not perfectly choreographed gunfights, the film is slightly too sluggish to feel as well-crafted as a better tomorrow.

Woo does his best to try and ensure that the runtime doesn’t feel self-indulgent, but the plot has a bit too much depth for my simple mind that just wanted to see backflips and explosions.

I mentione to a friend that i’d watched a better tomorrow, and they enthusiastically recommended this one. But it didn’t work for me quite as well as that film did, so i’d not recommend it if you want a gateway into the genre. But if you can put up with a confusing plot and some slower sequences, it’s not a bad film at all.