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Great Film overall

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Don't Believe the Hype

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Review: I really enjoyed this epic movie! It's full of intense action/drama and the performances from the three childhood friends were great. The movie is set in Hong Kong, 1967, were best friends Ben (Tony Leung), Paul (Waise Lee) and Frank (Jacky Leung), brawl with rival gangs, to gain respect. During Ben's marriage to his long time girlfriend Jane, Frank takes out a loan, so he can pay for the reception but he is attacked by a rival gang, who attempt to take his money. Frank manages to escape with a severe cut to his head and the money he borrowed but everyone at the wedding can see that there is something wrong with him. After the wedding Frank tells Ben about the fight with the rival gang and they head out for revenge. Frank ends up killing the leader of the gang, which puts both of there life's in danger. They then tell Paul about the fight and they decide to leave Hong Kong and head for Vietnam because they heard of a smuggling scam which could make them some money. As soon as they reach Vietnam, there cases with the contraband are destroyed because a suicide bomber attempts to kill a highly ranked officer of the army. After being wrongly accused of the bombing, they meet up with Luke (Simon Yam), to discuss the missing contraband and they soon become friends and meet his boss Leong. Whilst in his club, Frank bumps into an attractive singer, Sally, who agrees to meet him the following day. She then tells him about her love for Luke and how they planned to escape Vietnam but there plan was cut short when Leong's henchmen caught them in the act. Now that Luke is forced to work for Leong and Sally is forced into prostitution and drugs, they put together a plan to kill Leong and escape Vietnam forever. During a big shootout in Leong's club, Paul comes across a suitcase of gold, which is the only thing that he is interested in but the rest of them are fighting to get Sally to safety. During the shootout, Sally gets shot, so they have to try and keep her alive whilst trying to get there escape point. After a long battle with the army and Leong's henchmen, Sally dies and they are captured by the Vietcong and taken to a concentration camp. The Vietcong take the gold and find intelligence documents that Leong was going to sell to the North Vietnamese. After a brutal interrogation, Paul claims to be working for the CIA to save his friends. Frank is then forced to kill other prisoners and then Ben takes over and turns the gun on the officers that have captured them. Whilst escaping, Luke arrives with a elite squad and Paul goes into hiding with the gold. Paul finds Frank and urges him to be quiet so they don't get caught but Frank has become to distraught and he can't keep his mouth shut. Paul then shoots Frank in the back of the head and then he flees with the gold. When Luke finds Frank, he puts him on a rescue helicopter while Ben chases Paul, who destroys a peaceful village for no apparent reason. When Ben tries to save one of the villagers, Paul shoots him and escapes on a boat. Ben is then saved by some monks and eventually makes his way back to Saigon were he bumps into Luke, who has suffered some injuries to his face during the whole rescue attempt. Luke then takes him to Frank, who has severe head injuries and become addicted to heroin due to his injuries caused by Paul. Ben tries his utmost to get sense out of Frank but he has gone to a dark place and has completely lost control of his mind, so Ben puts him out of his misery. Luke then decides to stay in Saigon and Ben returns home to his wife, who has given birth to there child. After everything that had happened in Vietnam, Paul has become a successful businessman who is due a promotion. When Ben turns up at his workplace with Frank's skull, he confronts him about his actions in Saigon but Paul doesn't want to hear any of it. He then waits for him to finish work and they go head to head in a epic car chase. After destroying there cars, they finally come face to face with each other and Ben fights to redeem Frank's name. This must be the longest review I have ever typed! There is just so much going on in this film and I don't think that I would be doing it any justice if I covered it in a few words. It's a very detailed storyline which has every element covered. Like many John Woo movies, the gun action is great and the chemistry between Ben, Frank, Paul and there new found friend Luke, who I personally thought was the best character, was also great. The intensity is brilliant throughout and the cinematography made the film seem authentic and real. I would have liked to have seen what happened to Ben and Luke but that just me being picky. Enjoyable!Round-Up: This is another great achievement by John Woo, 69, who made this movie 3 years before he went to Hollywood and made the awful Hard Target with Jean Claude Van Damme. He did bounce back with Face/Off and Mission Impossible III but like Jackie Chan, he decided to turn his back on Hollywood and go back to making movies for the Oriental market. I personally hope that he gets a massive budget to make a epic movie for a worldwide audience, before he decides to stop making movies because he has a unique style of telling any story with detail and emotion.I recommend this movie to people who are into their action/crime/drama's starring Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung, Waise Lee and Simon Yam. 8/10

John Woo made action films in China before hitting Hollywood, and Bullet in the Head was consistent with his later work.Three friends in Hong Kong of 1967, Ben, Paul, and Frank become part of a gang in their youth, fighting rivals in the bustling city. Years later, Ben marries Jane at a wedding paid for with money from a loan shark, Mr. Kwai. On his way to the event, Frank is robbed by gang members, lead by a guy named Ringo. Frank and Ben find him at a bar and kill him. The next day, with the police in hot pursuit, Frank, Ben and Paul travel to Vietnam after hearing of a lucrative smuggling trade there. Bad luck follows them as a suicide bomber blows up all their goods and they are arrested as suspects. They are beaten by interrogators, and when the real bomber is found, it is a young boy who is executed quickly. Frank vomits when he sees the kid shot. They make their way to a nightclub and brothel to see a singer named Sally, who has been tricked into prostitution, and so they plan a elaborate escape with her, but she gets shot and the four surviving men take a boat up river with gold that they have stolen. The boat breaks down and they are captured by the Vietkong. With the gold is a list of CIZ agents with maps, which the three guys know nothing about; wrong place, wrong time. The VC torture them but they eventually manage to escape. The violence is frequent, with plenty of shootings, and the three main actors are good. The story is interesting with a surprising conclusion.

I've been using my DVD subscription service to go back over old films that I have either not seen or have not seen for ages and am focusing on those from the Far East that everyone expects you to have seen – mostly, at this point, the work of Kurosawa. I came to Bullet in the Head because I do enjoy John Woo's action films – even some of those he did when he came to America. As an "earlier" Woo film, I knew what to expect from Bullet in the Head, or at least I thought I did. Going with it we appear to have the standards of his creations all in place. Criminals, tragedy, flamboyant gunplay and massive action sequences with relationship drama going on in the middle of it. All of this is here and it works pretty well. Essentially it is the tale of three friends who go through crime and war together, changing their dynamics in tragic ways. At this level it is fine and I was interested in the characters and the relationships – OK, not a lot of complexity in there but enough to suit an action film such as this.The action sequences involve the usual jumping around, use of slow-motion and multiple showers of bullets. So, in essence, I can see why the film is loaded down with 5* reviews from the majority of the site's prolific reviewers (that's the filter I use when viewing the comments section), because the film does deliver much of what one would expect from John Woo and John Woo is/was good at doing it. But here is the problem – he sets it in Vietnam. Not only that but he acknowledges the horror of the war and the impact it had on those involved in it – mental and physical. OK, so nothing wrong with that in itself but it doesn't work when you have one scene of extreme violence that is shocking and harrowing and then you following up immediately with one that is exciting and well-choreographed. The extreme violence doesn't take away from the central story (because it is part of it) but by mixing it up with a much darker version of it he sets out a real challenge for himself, which is – can he manage to produce a film that explores themes covered in "serious" films such as Deer Hunter, while also delivering an action film based on the violent splintering of three friends? Sadly the answer is no, he cannot, and this is demonstrated within the film. It is a clumsy affair that does deliver harrowing scenes but is scared to linger on them or to do more with them that cheapen them by only having them as a device to move the plot the way it needs to go. It also doesn't help that Woo doesn't seem interested in being subtle or clever – so a film that really should end in an emotional kick in the guts in the boardroom (where the explosions are character based) spills out into a car chase and shootout that isn't exciting and doesn't fit with the tone of the ending. Within this the cast do a reasonably good job and some do almost manage to carry the film across the jumps in content and style. I always like Tony Leung and he is a good piece of casting. He doesn't totally manage to convince with what the script asks him to do but he is a good heart of the film. Cheung is not quite as good but works well with Leung to build a believable friendship. Lee has less to work with as his character is a lot simpler and I thought his performance was weaker as a result. Yam was an invincible and cool presence that didn't add a lot to the story but made for a good character.Overall, Bullet in the Head produces many of the things that I came to the film for and as such had enough to keep me interested. The problem was that it never hung together convincingly and the use of the war as a backdrop introduced things that could have been impacting but just didn't gel. The action scenes are good (even if not as well choreographed due to the scale of the battles) but the plot is the start of the problem in a film that is never what it should be and certainly shouldn't be listed among the "must-see" films from Woo.

John Woo directs an absolute merciless Vietnam war drama that is comparable to The Deer Hunter in it's power and is quite possibly one of the greatest movies of Woo's career. The movie follows three trouble-making kids (Tony Leung, Waise Lee and Jackie Cheung) who are exiled to Vietnam to escape the Hong Kong authorities after a rival gang member is killed by them, once in Saigon the run into "The Viet Cong" who are far worse than the HK authorities and their rival gang and what the V.C do to our trio makes them regret in all their hearts that they didn't go to prison in the much safer Hong Kong. A Bullet In The Head would be a tale about friendship overcoming the hard times of war, if the friendships in the movie actually prevailed. Instead the movie gives us a heart wrenching look at war and what it does to the three friends in the movie. The kids in the movie are in the beginning not very sympathetic and give off the impression that they deserve what they get but once they go to Vietnam you realize just how much in over their head they are and Woo filters the emotion from this situation and effectively conveys a story that is hard to watch but very rewarding nonetheless. After witnessing the debacle of Windtalkers I decided to see if Woo could direct war, well it goes without saying this blows that one out of the water. This is up there with Hard Boiled and The Killer as Woo's best film.* * * * out of 4-(Excellent. A Must See!)