THE KILLER -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 3/24/10

 

I wasn't that impressed with THE KILLER (1989) the first time I saw it back in the 90s. Then again, I was watching a choppy pan-and-scan VHS copy that was badly-dubbed and looked awful. Plus, I'd just been blown away by HARD BOILED (still my favorite John Woo film), and THE KILLER seemed rather tame in comparison with that insanely action-packed epic. But with the new 2-disc Ultimate Edition of THE KILLER on the Dragon Dynasty label, I'm finally getting to see it in all its uncut pictorial glory and appreciate it as one of the finest action films ever made.

I think it was an episode of the great TV series "The Incredibly Strange Film Show" that first got me interested in the films of John Woo, Tsui Hark, and other hot Hong Kong directors. I found the innovative and extremely rapid-fire editing in the film clips to be a new and exhilarating visual experience. Just as the Beatles interpreted American rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues and played it back to us in exciting new ways, Hong Kong cinema was assimilating the methods of Sam Peckinpah and others and using this as a starting point for creating a super-charged cinematic style that would, in turn, have an overwhelming effect on the future of American action cinema.

Woo himself credits many influences, among them French director Jean-Pierre Melville, certain Japanese films, and classical American cinema. Unsurprisingly, Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorcese are key figures in the development of his film style, in addition to the old Hollywood musicals. Woo calls THE KILLER an "action-musical", and it's easy to see how his shoot-em-up sequences are often inspired by the spirit of that genre's more dazzling and dynamic production numbers. (I'm guessing Woo is an admirer of Gene Kelly and films such as SINGIN' IN THE RAIN and ON THE TOWN.)


There's even a little bit of Charlie Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS, I think, in the relationship between ace hitman Ah Jong (the great Chow Yun-Fat) and Jennie (Sally Yeh), the pretty young cabaret singer who was blinded during one of his hits. The guilt-ridden Ah Jong befriends Jennie with the hope of helping her regain her eyesight with a cornea transplant, but to pay for the operation he will have to postpone his plans to retire and perform one last hit. Complicating matters is the fact that the evil Triad boss for whom he works has just put out the order for Ah Jong himself to be eliminated.

Meanwhile, Inspector Li Ying (Danny Lee), a renegade cop who has the same "hate-hate" relationship with his boss as countless other renegade cops before him, is hot on Ah Jong's trail and has traced him to Jennie. In a strange turn of events, cop and hitman become grudging allies as Li Ying sympathizes with Ah Jong's desire to help Jennie and decides to back him up when the Triad kill squad comes a-callin'. This leads to a blazing shoot-out in a church with the fate of our unlikely heroes in the balance.

Unlike the usual stoic, repressed action figure, Chow Yun Fat's character is a man of deep feelings whose code of killing only bad guys is compromised not only by Jennie's injury but by the shooting of a little girl during an exciting escape from the police. Ah Jong risks his freedom to race the girl to a hospital, where he and Li Ying have one of many Mexican standoffs (Woo really loves these) just a few feet away from where doctors are struggling to save the girl's life.

Here, and in Ah Jong's scenes with Jennie, Woo's penchant for melodrama and sentimentality come to the fore. Such unrestrained romanticism may be off-putting to more hardcore action fans who prefer their mayhem untainted by mush. Although it gets a little thick at times, I think this gives an interesting added dimension to Woo's passages of gun-blazing carnage, as does the underlying religious tone (Woo describes himself as a Christian) which makes Ah Jong such a conflicted character seeking redemption.


Also interesting is the fact that Li Ying begins to identify with and even admire him for his honorable qualities--Woo points out their similarities in a nice parallel-image sequence--as their mutual concern for Jennie has them pretending to be and eventually becoming friends. Woo's humor comes to the fore when they initially hold each other at gunpoint while assuring the blind Jenny that all is well, even giving each other affectionate nicknames "Small B" and "Shrimp Head" (or "Mickey Mouse" and "Dumbo" in the English dub). By the end of the movie, they're as close as brothers and willing to die for each other.

More than anything else, however, THE KILLER is a feast for action connoisseurs as Woo stages one astounding shoot-out after another. His trademarks are all here, from the rapid-fire two-gun approach (his heroes never seem to run out of bullets) which has since been adopted by, well, everybody, to the sliding-backward-on-the-floor-while firing method, to everything else in-between. Innovations abound, with Woo's distinctive use of slow-motion and freeze-frames mixed with the regular action as his artistic sensibility sees fit, all creatively edited into a barrage of explosive images that bombard the viewer in waves of kinetic visual sensation.

Some of the action borders on the surreal, with scores of bad guys swarming non-stop into the line of fire only to be mowed down in twisting, jerking, blood-spewing (yet strangely balletic) death throes. Echoes of the famous shoot-outs from Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH pervade the climactic battle in the church, while the melodrama of the story weaves its way through the hail of bullets and fiery explosions toward a starkly emotional conclusion. It bears noting that Woo improvised much of the story and dialogue on-set, shooting from a treatment rather than a finished script, yet considers this to be one of his most "complete" films.


The Dragon Dynasty DVD is in the original widescreen with Dolby Digital sound. Languages are Cantonese and dubbed English, both mono, with English and Spanish subtitles. The second disc includes an intimate interview with John Woo, two audience Q & A's with Woo which accompanied screenings of THE KILLER and HARD BOILED, a look at the locations of THE KILLER then and now, and a John Woo trailer gallery. Missing in action is a commentary track.

Whether you're a long-time fan or just seeing it for the first time, Dragon Dynasty's Ultimate Edition of THE KILLER is a great way to experience this dazzling Hong Kong action classic.

THE KILLER -- DVD Review by Porfle

RED CLIFF -- DVD/Blu-Ray review by porfle

(NOTE: Blu-Ray comments by Ian Friedman. This review is for the 148-minute Western edit of the film; in Asia, it runs 280 minutes and was released in two separate parts. The longer version is also available on the Magnet DVD label.) 

This review was originally posted on 4/15/10

 

 "A dream for 18 years...five years of preparation...almost a year of principle photography" begins the making-of featurette for Magnet's new DVD release of John Woo's epic RED CLIFF (2008), and there's little doubt where all that effort went. I haven't seen all of Woo's films, but if this isn't his masterpiece then I can't wait to see the one that tops it. 

The story is taken from the fact-based Chinese legend of the "Three Kingdoms" and begins in 208 A.D. Years of civil war have brought the defeat of the Northern warlords by prime minister Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang), a fierce military leader who now has his sights set on conquering the peaceful Southern territories. 

Browbeating a weak Emperor into declaring the two Southern rulers traitors, Cao Cao then leads his huge naval and infantry forces toward what he is confident will be certain victory. Achieving this, his next goal will be to usurp the throne of the Emperor himself. When the soldiers and civilians under ruler Liu Bei are forced into retreat, he sends his brilliant military strategist Kongming (Takeshi Kaneshiro) to seek the help of the young and inexperienced ruler Sun Quan, hoping that their combined efforts might withstand Cao Cao's invasion. 

Sun Quan's viceroy Zhao Yu (Tony Leung) accepts the challenge and, with Kongming's help, sets about devising a battle plan with which their vastly outnumbered forces might stand a chance against overwhelming odds. 

After the plot is set into motion, the first half of the film is a steady, suspenseful buildup to the initial clash between Cao Cao and the Southern alliance. This bloody battle between two mighty ground forces would suffice as a grand finale for most war films (which it does, in fact, for RED CLIFF PART 1 as released in Asia). 

 After being lured into an ambush by Sun Quan's fearless young sister, Princess Shang Xiang (Wei Zhao), who is determined to help defend her homeland, the invading army is thwarted by Zhao Yu's brilliantly effective tactic known as the "Tortoise Formation." Here, soldiers mass together using their shields in unison to create a living maze which traps the enemy forces. The resulting battle is rife with Woo's distinctive flashes of imaginative imagery and technical prowess. 

 

With this defeat, Cao Cao then establishes a base camp across the river from Red Cliff and plans a massive naval attack. Thus, the buildup of suspense begins anew as the two sides plot to outwit each other and gain the advantage in the impending sea battle, until at last RED CLIFF explodes into one of the most spectacular warfare sequences ever filmed. Arrows darken the skies, great wooden warships collide in raging walls of flame, and hundreds of soldiers engage in furious hand-to-hand combat and brutal swordplay. 

 These are some of the most thrilling and mind-boggling visuals ever devised for a film of this kind, as Woo brings all of his accumulated skills as an action director to bear with a sustained intensity that is spellbinding. 

With all of this, however, the story and characters are a major part of what makes RED CLIFF such a rewarding experience. Tony Leung gives a strong performance as the wise and valiant Zhao Yu, providing a stark contrast to the equally good Fengyi Zhang's arrogant, war-loving Cao Cao. 

In THE KILLER, Woo used cross-cutting to highlight the similarities between his adversarial main characters, while here, he does so to accentuate their essential differences. We see Cao Cao making his war plans and Zhao Yu anticipating them all; later, Zhao Yu shares tender moments with his devoted wife Xiao Qiao (Chi-Ling Lin) while a lovelorn Cao Cao, who adores Xiao Qiao from afar, seeks hollow comfort amidst his uncaring concubines. 

 Xiao Qiao's devotion to Zhao Yu leads to a pivotal sequence, beautifully crafted by Woo, in which she steals away to Cao Cao's camp and surrenders herself to him in order to delay his attack. The enemy warlord reveals a poignant emotional vulnerability here, giving his character a depth beyond that of the standard villain. As a climax to the monumental battle which follows, Zhao Yu's mad dash to rescue Xiao Qiao from certain death is portrayed in such exquisitely cinematic terms that the result is both thrilling and fiercely romantic. Here, Woo impressively demonstrates that his former melodramatic tendencies have matured into sheer visual poetry. 

 

Other episodes throughout the film are memorable. A scene involving a little boy and an off-key flute introduces Zhao Yu's character in delightful visual terms, as does his stirring stringed-instrument duet with Kongming. There's a breathtaking CGI-enhanced passage in which Kongming releases a white carrier pigeon while the camera pulls back to track its progress as it flies past the scores of ships in Cao Cao's vast navy, over the shoreline and into the enemy encampment, all in one seamless shot. 

Woo's camera is constantly on the move, but always with purpose. Technical aspects such as set design, costuming, and cinematography are all first-rate, and the stunts and fight choreography of the battle scenes are consistently exciting. CGI is well-used for the most part, adding scope to the film's endless masses of soldiers and warships and enhancing the pictorial splendor of many breathtaking shots. Yet there are enough flesh-and-blood extras and massive real-world sets to create a genuine sense of wonder and spectacle. 

The DVD from Magnolia's Magnet label is in 2.35:1 widescreen with both Mandarin and English-dubbed Dolby 5.1 soundtracks. Subtitles are in English and Spanish. Extras include the featurette "The Making of an Epic: Red Cliff", a brief interview in which John Woo discusses the creation of the carrier pigeon shot, the promo short "HDNet: A Look at Red Cliff", storyboards, and trailers for other Magnolia releases. 

The Blu-ray shows excellent color and detail with no sign of digital tampering. The clarity and vivid color work perfectly for an epic movie like Red Cliff, since it consists of huge armies and vistas. The sound mix is in a word, thundering, it really sounds like a battle from the period of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in your living room. The sound separation is excellent with great directional support. 

It's interesting to compare an early Woo film such as THE KILLER with this one to see how far an already great director has evolved over the years. He has refined his formidable skills to such an extent that watching a towering achievement like RED CLIFF makes me wonder how much better Woo can possibly get. It left me both exhausted and exhilarated, and glowing with renewed respect for John Woo as a consummate film artist of the first order 

RED CLIFF -- DVD/Blu-Ray review by porfle

HEROES SHED NO TEARS -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 6/21/19

 

John Woo had already been directing films for 12 years before making HEROES SHED NO TEARS, aka "Ying xiong wu lei" (Film Movement Classics, 1986), but it's the earliest of his films that I've seen which already makes it an interesting watch for a fan of his dazzling, flamboyant directing style.

It was actually completed in 1984 but shelved until Woo's subsequent film A BETTER TOMORROW became a hit.  Sort of a contractual obligation film for Golden Harvest, Woo's heart wasn't completely in it, yet he packed this blazing war thriller with as much bloody, bone-crushing action and tearful sentiment as it would hold.

The story is simple: a group of seasoned Chinese mercenaries are hired by the Thai government to attack the jungle lair of a powerful, loathsome drug lord, destroy it, capture him, and make their way through Thailand, Cambodia, and Viet Nam to the coast and their pickup point.

But once they have him (after the film's first explosive action sequence gets things off to a rousing start), everything goes wrong. The next thrilling scene occurs when the group's leader Chan Chung (Eddy Ko) stops off at his home to check on his family (his son, sister-in-law, and her father), only to find them already taken hostage.

The tense, bullet-riddled mayhem that follows sets the tone for the rest of the film, which will consist of action scene after action scene connected by interludes of both sticky sentiment (Chan Chung and his son have many touching father-son moments) and out-and-out comedy relief supplied by two very gregarious young battle chums.

This is in addition to instances of shocking sadism supplied by an evil Vietnamese colonel with whom the group runs afoul when they rescue a female French journalist from being executed, during which the colonel loses an eye.

He not only orders his own men to go after the group, but also terrorizes a local tribe of villagers into tracking them down as well. With the Thai drug soldiers, the Chinese soldiers, and the native spear-carrying trackers all after our heroes, the film becomes sort of a jungle variation of Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS.

The aforementioned drastic shifts in tone are pretty much all over the place (a quality Woo was aware of while filming), but one hardly has time to take note of this before the next battle fills the air with bullets, blood, and fiery explosions.

At one point Chan Chung runs into an old American friend, one of those "never went home" ex-soldiers whose hut is rigged with about a ton of explosives, all of which will eventually go off when the bad guys find their way there.

Stylistically, the film has little or none of Woo's usual finesse, that certain artistic blend of slow-motion, creative camera angles, and meticulous rapid-fire editing to create a heady visual experience that goes beyond simply recording events.  Here, he uses more of a sledgehammer approach, well-staged but boisterous and bombastic. 

Along the way to their pickup point, our heroic mercenaries go through hell and have their number violently reduced one by one.  It's almost painful to watch when characters we care about are killed and situations go dreadfully wrong, but this is a testament to the relatively crude (by Woo standards) yet viscerally effective HEROES SHED NO TEARS, which is an absolute must-see for John Woo fans.  

Film Movement Classics
1986
99 Minutes
Hong Kong
Cantonese, English, Thai, Vietnamese (English subtitles)
Action, Drama
NR

Blu-ray Features

Interview with star Eddy Ko
New Essay by Grady Hendrix
Sound: 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo

DVD Features

Interview with star Eddy Ko
New Essay by Grady Hendrix
 

HEROES SHED NO TEARS -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

December Releases From Vivendi Entertainment

Disciples Of The 36th Chamber

Fong Sai Yuk’s uninhibited arrogance toward a Manchu lord forces him to seek refuge in a Shaolin temple. Although abundantly trained in the martial arts, he is no match for Master San Te, the creator of the 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Exhausted by his frequent defeats, Fong seeks to escape his prison and crosses paths with a governor, who rewards him with a yellow robe granting immunity from any Manchu. But when the governor’s true intentions are in question, Fong may decide to feed his foolish ego and betray the Shaolin Temple.

· Street Date: December 7, 2010
· SRP: DVD $19.97

Buy it at Amazon.com


Hard Boiled

Chow Yun-Fat stars as one of the all-time toughest, coolest cops, who teams up with an undercover agent to bring down a ruthless gun smuggling ring. Features some of the most amazing action cinematography in film history.

· Street Date: December 14, 2010
· SRP: blu-ray $19.97

Buy it at Amazon.com

December Releases From Vivendi Entertainment

John Woo's "RED CLIFF" - On Blu-ray Disc And DVD March 23 From Magnolia Home Entertainment

From Legendary Cinema Action Master John Woo Comes A New Epic Like No Other As RED CLIFF, Arrives on Blu-ray Disc And DVD March 23 From Magnolia Home Entertainment As Part of the Six Shooter Film Series.

Both the US Theatrical Version and the Original International Version Containing Part I & Part II with a combined runtime of almost five hours will be made available on Blu-ray Disc and DVD.

“THRILLING FILMMAKING...RED CLIFF BLAZES ACROSS THE SCREEN WITH A SWEEP THAT MOST MOVIES CAN ONLY DREAM OF.”- The Huffington Post

“Red Cliff is a legendary filmmaker’s visual symphony.”- Wall Street Journal

“A formidable prelude to an epic battle with resplendent effects and action spectacles.”- Hollywood Reporter


In 208 A.D., the Han Dynasty Emperor grants permission to the greedy General Cao Cao to form a movement that will pulverize two warlords who stand in his way. The warlords, Liu Bei and Sun Quan, are sworn enemies but know their only hope for survival is to band together and counter the attack. Although outnumbered by Cao Cao’s vast and fast approaching army, the warlords put their rivalry behind them and end up surprising all those who doubted their small brigade.

One of the most expensive film productions in Chinese cinema and the highest grossing box office, RED CLIFF garnered six Hong Kong Film ‘09 Awards including Best Art Direction, Best Costume & Make Up Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Supporting Actress. Back together for the first time since the classic Hard Boiled, RED CLIFF reunites legendary action-cinema master Woo and international superstar Leung.

Buy the international version at Amazon.com:
DVD
Blu-Ray

Buy the theatrical version at Amazon.com
DVD
Blu-Ray

Buy the international version at HK Flix:
DVD
Blu-Ray

Buy the theatrical version at HK Flix:
DVD
Blu-Ray

John Woo's "RED CLIFF" - On Blu-ray Disc And DVD March 23 From Magnolia Home Entertainment

Be like John Woo and win some cash!

Jess pointed out this link to a contest that is being done in conjunction with the release of the Stranglehold video game coming out soon. Contestants must submit a John Woo-esque short film (2-2 1/2 min). The winner will receive 25,000 dollars in cash prizes. Enter today and do HK and Cult Film DVD News proud!

Full details at:
http://www.myspace.com/strangleholdgame

Be like John Woo and win some cash!