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You'll be hard pressed to find an action movie as cheesy, ridiculously stupid and clinically insane as John Woo's Hard Boiled. A cult classic, this flick showcases some of the most violently intense action scenes ever created for film, which even manage to rival those in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando (and I never thought I'd ever be saying that).

Chow Yun-Fat is a typical cardboard cut-out action hero here -- he does his talking with his guns. He stars as an invincible supercop, Tequila Yuen, who relaxes in his local Jazz bar at night after pumping numerous bullets through Triad members throughout the day. Meanwhile, an informant, Tony (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), is struggling to decide whether he wants to be a cop or a gangster after becoming too deeply involved in an assignment; wrestling with an uncertain identity, he becomes the mismatched buddy to Tequila on the long and winding road of chaotic violence.

It's a simple premise, but there's something very poetical about the way Woo chooses to execute his action scenes that make Hard Boiled significantly better than your average actioner. His elegant direction of cinematic violence is truly fascinating as it not only gives a lasting impression of the true force of various weaponry, but manages to detail the cynical effects of bullets ripping through human flesh in such a passionate manner. The mixing of slow motion and real-time footage in many superbly choreographed gun fights helped redefine the action genre at the time of the film's making, and they look incredibly inventive even to this day that it becomes very difficult to take your eyes off them.

Another thing that makes this film great is its subtle humour, which it chooses to deliver, not via a bunch of empty one-liners, but via an intriguing visual manner, also. In a spectacular forty-minute hospital blow-up-a-thon, Tequila has to rescue a bunch of newborn babies, and takes it upon himself to "rap" to one of them when he begins crying. Tequila is then rewarded for his comforting skills when the baby begins urinating down his leg to extinguish his burning trousers after a hectic gun fight -- it's hilariously karmatic.

Scenes involving Tequila's love interest (Teresa Mo) are perhaps less intriguing than the action scenes, but that's hardly surprising considering how exhilarating the latter are. Philip Kwok as Mad Dog and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as Johnny Wong make great conflicting characters, and things feel incredibly intense and chaotic for a large majority of the film that they're involved in shootouts with Tequila. If you're looking for an over-the-top action spectacle then you really can't go wrong with Hard Boiled.

A year or so after the film was released John Woo actually emigrated to America, and of all the action films he has made since, Face/Off is the only one that that has lived up to the level he achieved here and in his earlier years. So, if you haven't done so already, I definitely suggest that you watch this intense "God of Guns" action flick; it will remind you that they really don't make films like this in this era of over-indulgent CGI effects and extreme political correctness. Even the awful dubbing and incoherent subtitles cannot ruin it's awesomeness.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.