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Thanks for the memories!

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Blistering performances.

When talking to friends about The Killer,I would get told about John Woo's Heroic Bloodshed epic Hard Boiled,but despite seeing Killer a number of times,I never got round to seeing this title. With a Hong Kong challenge coming up on ICM,I decided it was time to get on the boil.View on the film:Bringing the curtain down on his Heroic Bloodshed/Hong Kong era in a similar fashion to Dario Argento's 1987 Giallo Opera, (both films did not do as well as expected in their domestic markets)co-writer/(with Barry Wong and Gordon Chan) co-star/ directing auteur John Woo reunites with cinematographer Wong Wing-Hang to conclude the visual motifs that span his credits,which fly into view from the opening bird cages in the tea house shoot-out shaking with slo-mo shootings, freeze frames and mountains of debris landing on Woo and Wing-Hang's "Bullet Ballet." Holding everyone hostage in a hospital, the pristine, metallic walls sharply reflect Woo's ultra-stylisation, fired up with unleashed whip-pans and extended tracking shots that give the cracking action a breathless atmosphere.Changing the plot just a week before filming, the decision by Wong/Chan and Woo to pour Tequila on the side of the law brilliantly crystallises the themes of Heroic Bloodshed, via the rich loyalty between Tequila and Alan, (named after Alain Delon's Le Samouraï loner) the feisty attitude of Teresa Chang to get deeply involved in the fighting and a relaxed mind-set on using extreme measures to take out cops/baddies. Introducing Tequila playing Jazz, the writers cleverly place moments of close-up calm between the action to dig into the contemplation Tequila makes over how to get the most people out of the hospital alive. Facing bloodshed for the final time, Chow Yun-Fat gives a blistering performance as Tequila,who bounces along lively with Tony Chiu-Wai Leung's anxious Alan,and keeps a knife-edge alert in the explosive battles that never go off the boil.

Action all the way, but I lost interest halfway through due to sensless killing of innocent people. How many people can die in one film?? Good photography and visuals, but afterwards even this did not matter anymore. Also a lot of plot flaws.

I don't mind a good action flick every now and then but this was all action and virtually no story. Well OK, there's a story line involving rival gun smuggling gangs, and after one of them takes out the other, it's undercover cops to the rescue to put the bad guys down. But gee, if something like the gun battle scenes in the movie ever occurred in real life, the front pages of every newspaper in the world would be screaming about the dozens of people left dead at the hands of crazed psychopaths. Probably the best I can say is that because of all the action sequences, violence, explosions and blood letting, director John Woo was on top of his game coordinating all the mayhem. But after a while, it all became rather mindless bordering on the ridiculous. Yet I did take some inspiration from the title of the movie, and sauntered on over to the kitchen to cook up some hard boiled eggs, so things weren't a total loss.

Much has been said about John Woo's 1992 crime-action extravaganza "Hard Boiled", and for good reason. It is about Tequila, an impulsive, tough-as-nails cop that doesn't always play by the book, and it is also about Lung, a self loathing undercover cop that is morally confused. Both Tequila and Lung are on a hunt for an illegal weapons cache, but they are both on opposite ends of the operation, and neither is aware of the other for much of the screen time. One thing this film gets right from the very start is a sense of vulnerability for the characters. Yes, they are skilled and crafty policemen who can take on many at once in a gunfight, but there is always the feeling that they, and, by extension, all of the other characters in the film, could be killed at any moment. This feeling is largely due to the unexpected death of a character at the beginning of the film, which sets us on edge for whats to come. It definitely helps that every scene is incredibly well choreographed, well shot, and well edited, and everything is easy to follow because of that, even during intricate action scenes in which bullets are flying in many directions and many characters are trying to avoid them while trying to hit the others with their bullets. Although he relies on it heavily, Woo's use of slow motion is always effective in increasing the tension of the moment. All of the effects used in the action scenes are practical, with real explosions, incredible stunt work, and of course ridiculously large quantities of blood. All of the technical aspects of these scenes are undeniably fantastic, but that doesn't mean anything if the story and characters aren't involving, but luckily this has a crime story that is complex and characters that aren't perfect, but have genuine moments of empathy.A lot of the action in the film also has another reason than to simply look cool: it's to build character. Many people talk about the incredible 3 and a half minute long one take action scene near the end of the film, but what most don't realize is that without context, that scene doesn't evoke nearly the same emotion. Without the build up to that scene and an understanding of the characters, it is admirable, but not nearly as visceral and intense. One of the reasons it works so well is not just because of the amazing choreography, but because this is a turning point for Lung as a character. Up until this point, he has been haunted by his mistakes and the bad things he has been forced to do. However, during the moment in the elevator after he shoots the cop, Tequila helps him realize that, while mistakes that impactful are definitely difficult to handle, he doesn't have to dwell on them, and the sooner he moves past his fear of doing an irreversible wrong, the sooner he can do justice to others and move on. After they come out of the elevator, the music begins back up again, signifying a tonal shift, and a shift away from Lung's fear and guilt. Also, the character of Lung has been having an identity and morality crisis throughout the film, and as the viewer we never quite know who's side he's on, until around this point, when he confesses that he has never killed a cop.Speaking of the ending, I feel the rest of that 30 minute finale is vastly underrated compared to that one incredible shot. That whole sequence is fantastic. The stakes are incredibly high, with hundreds of babies, children, and injured people trying to be saved from the hospital, and many situations when I genuinely couldn't imagine how they would make it out, yet every-time they made it out, it totally made sense. It also cuts between many different characters and many different action scenes at once, yet it doesn't get knotted and confusing.This is a intense and fast paced crime story that builds from one action scene to the next, conveying character through its action with style that doesn't replace substance.