There’s something that hits a little different when you watch a gunfight orchestrated by the maestro of mayhem known as John Woo. For a start, the sheer, chaotic thrill of the thing makes you want to scream the directors name like Ric Flair after inhaling a particularly potent snort of china white, but once you squint past the infinite number of bullet squibs and explosions, there’s a sense of the operatic going on that few other helmers of action can hope to match.
Be it the noticable religious overtones, the gargantuan epicness or the small moments of ethereal beauty that comes from a random, fluttering dove in the midst of a searing fire fight, you know when you’ve been Wooed and the fact that it always fucking rocks doesn’t hurt much either.
So without any further ado, let’s dive into our countdown – preferably headfirst with a blazing pistol clenched in each hand…
Spoiler warning in full effect.
5) Hard Target – The Mardi Gras Meltdown (1993)
While Woo’s first American feature is admittedly missing the sheer emotional stakes of his Hong Kong epics, there’s a feeling that Hard Target has been unfairly slept on when it comes to the sheer gonzo nature of it’s climatic gunfight.
To set the scene, Lance Henriksen’s gang of wealthy human hunters have cornered Jean Claude Van Damme’s luxuriously mulleted hero in what looks to be a graveyard of old Mardi Gras floats, but despite the army of heavies he has at his disposal (including The Mummy’s Arnold Voslo), Lance hasn’t reckoned on how much of a “hard target” his quarry truly is.
What follows is utter, fucking madness that begins with JCVD kicking a gas can into a goons face and shoting it with a shotgun that blows the dude through a wall, and ends with him dropping a live hand grenade onto Henriksen’s dick. However, inbetween these vital points, he have Van Damme ducking arrows, emptying whole clips into bad guys while only pausing to boot them in the face and pulling off some of the most beautiful flying roundhouse kicks of his entire career against the backdrop of floats that explode and burn like the residents of New Orleans soaked them in kerosene before putting them in storage. It may lack the emotional punch of some of Woo’s earlier works, but by god is it a fun slice of comic book insanity.
Oh yeah, and Lance Henriksen totally gets set on fire. For real.
4) A Better Tomorrow II – The Bloody Blueprint (1987)
The gunfight that started it all… Sure, Woo had filmed action before and he’d shot drama, but never had anyone blended them quite like his 1987 breakout which saw all of the very dramatic threads come to a head in the mansion of a typically smug crime boss. As Chow Yun-Fat, Ti Lung and Lung Si stride towards their target, suited and booted for the carnage that lies ahead, Woo unleashes a tsunami of heroic bloodshed the likes of which the world had never seen. Torsos soak up hot lead like bloody sponges, shrapnel tears through flesh and Ti Lung brings a samurai sword to a gunfight and somehow fucking wins!
However, what made A Better Tomorrow stand out from the pack is that each of our good guys had a major investment in seeing the bad guys annihilated as all three had suffered tremendous personal losses and thus their assault is pretty much a suicide mission which makes the ensuing violence that much more desperate. Simply put, the bad guy has to die, even if the best case scenario is death or spending a lifetime in prison pissing through a dialysis machine and the frantic desperation is fuckibg palpable.
And yet, when the smoke clears, the sight of our three heroes, slumped in chairs and bleeding like John McClane’s feet, proves to be one of exceptional power as the police arrive and they accept their respective fates in a state of serene – if painful – calm.
3) Face/Off – Hanger Hellscape (1997)
There are more emotional gun battles in Face/Off (the blistering free for all set to Somewhere Over The Rainbow is sublime) and there are more tense (the church showdown has more doves than a David Copperfield magic show), but when it comes to scale, the opening battle set in and around an aircraft hanger proved that Woo had finally gotten the hang of a Hollywood-sized budget. Nic Cage’s absurdly stylish terrorist-for-hire, Castor Troy finds that his peaceful fight out of a doomed LA will be experiencing a slight delay when his vengeful opposite number, John Travolta’s mourning cop, Sean Archer, rolls up with a shit load of cops.
Before you know it, Troy’s shooting hostages and flinging them out the door as he taxis down the runway while Archer shoots at his engines as he gives chase in a helicopter until the plane crashes into a hanger, but Woo’s not done yet. Obviously a gun fight ensues and the luckier participants only lose an ear, but soon it comes down to Troy and Archer mano e mano. However, after some textbook Nic Cage caterwauling (“I’m REEEAAADYYYY, ready for the big BAAAAAAYBEEEEE!!!”), Archer scores the win with an assist from a nearby jet engine that sends the villain into a coma.
And this is just the start of the freaking film! Phew!
2) The Killer – Mother Of God (1989)
Some believe that The Killer is Woo at the pinnacle of his powers and it hard to disagree after witnessing his debris spraying masterpiece. But while many rightly praise the super-stylish moment where Chow-Yun Fat’s soulful hitman assassinates a target at a boating gala, it’s that church-set barnstormer that sees the action legend at his most emotional and raw.
After Fat’s killer and Danny Lee’s idyistic cop forge a bromance for the ages, both vow to protect the club singer whom the former accidently blinded during a hit gone wrong. As waves of goons surround the church where they’ve taken shelter, Woo takes the religious iconography and pumps it full of amphetamines with stained glass windows shattering, doves criss-crossing everywhere and, in it’s pivotal moment, a statue of the Virgin Mary goes bye bye as it spectacularly obliterates as Lee’s stunned cop looks on in horror.
And yet, as moving as the sequence is, what puts a bit of extra recoil on the soul is the stunningly down-beat ending that sees the eyes Fat was hoping to donate to his blind muse shot right out of his head during the climactic shoot down and the sight of the sightless couple scrabbling in the dirt for one another is almost too much to bare.
1) Hard Boiled – Every. Single. Bloody. Moment. (1992)
Sure, the later John Wick films rightfully claim to be the cream of the crop when it comes to modern, frenetic action, but back in the nineties, Woo delivered an action movie so huge, so spectacular, I truly believe it’s yet to be beaten and out of its three major action sequences, there’s just no choosing.
I mean, how could you? The opening teahouse massacre is as thrilling as you could hope for as Chow-Yun Fat’s hot headed Inspector Tequila (no, really) engages with arms dealers in a very public place. However, this is just small potatoes compared to the warehouse battle that takes place at the middle of the film that sees Tony Leung’s tortured undercover cop, Alan, turn on his old gang in order to hook up a bigger fish in the form of certified Suitcase Johnny Wong. However, after reluctantly slaughtering his own colleagues, the ever-present Tequila shows up tooled to the nines and then shit really gets crazy as motorcycle riders are blown out of the air and grenade blasts get awfully close to our hero.
And yet, as impressive as this is, even this set-piece is dwarfed by the gargantuan finale which sees Wong take an entire hospital hostage and the movie launches itself into the freakin’ atmosphere.
Patients are cut down in the crossfire, Alan and oddly honorable henchman Mag Dog duel to the death, everything blows up and, in the movie’s most audacious scene, Tequila fends off endless thugs while clutching an adorable baby. It’s an experience quite unlike any other that succeeds in both being impressively kickass, yet genuinely emotional in a way that hasn’t been seen before or since.
An exceedingly high calibre…
We Have Issues 