John Woo reveals why he was ‘nervous’ to cast John Travolta in ‘Broken Arrow’
John Woo directed his first feature in 1974, but he didn’t helm his first “John Woo film” until over a decade later. Forty years ago, the 1986 crime picture A Better Tomorrow established the Hong Kong filmmaking legend as an action movie visionary whose distinct style has been often imitated, but rarely surpassed.
To hear Woo tell it, though there’s a world where his career re-invention — and subsequent genre revolution — very nearly didn’t happen.
“I was a big fan of Jean-Pierre Melville and I had been trying to make a movie like Le Samouraï for over 10 years,” Woo tells Gold Derby, referring to the influential French filmmaker and his 1967 thriller starring Alain Delon. “But I couldn’t get any studios interested; at that time in Hong Kong, the most popular genres were kung fu movies and comedies.”
Woo dutifully spent his first years as a director churning out forgettable programmers in those two genres. By 1986, though, work was drying up and he saw the opportunity to make his Melville homage slipping away. That’s when friend and fellow Hong Kong action maestro, Tsui Hark, handed him the Better Tomorrow script, which follows two brothers (Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung) and their associate (Chow Yun-Fat) as they become enmeshed in Hong Kong’s criminal underworld.
“He told me, ‘You can make this like Le Samouraï to fulfill your dream,’” Woo recalls. “I wasn’t satisfied with the script, but Tsui Hark encouraged me by saying, ‘Why don’t you put yourself in the film?’ He gave me freedom to rewrite the whole script, so every line in the movie is from my heart.”
Released in Hong Kong in August of 1986, A Better Tomorrow quickly entered the hearts of action fans and the movie’s reputation carried it overseas where it found a devoted audience among aspiring American filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Lana and Lilly Wachowski. After a string of other hits — including 1989’s The Killer and 1992’s Hard Boiled — Woo made the trip to America himself and embarked on a Hollywood run that gave the world such mid-‘90s action favorites as Broken Arrow, which celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year.
For the latest edition of The Gold Standard, Woo revisits some of his signature John Woo movies and filmmaking moves. And look for remastered versions of his Hong Kong classics coming soon to revival houses, festivals — a new 4K version of The Killer is playing at the Sonoma Film Festival this weekend — and Blu-ray suppliers near you from the good folks at Arrow Films.
A Better Tomorrow (1986)
Besides introducing Woo to his muse, Chow Yun-Fat, this career-transforming film also established the “two guns” action motif that the director became famous for. Simply put, you don’t get to The Matrix without A Better Tomorrow.
I tried to create the most classic gun battle scene in Hong Kong film history. I spent three or four weeks just picking out the guns for the scene where the characters walk into a restaurant and use two guns each — four guns altogether — to kill all the bad guys. The props guys were showing me all kinds of guns, but my theory was that a true hero would never use a machine gun, only a handgun — and he’d use it like a sword.
I was also influenced by musicals, because gunshots sounded like drumbeats to me. But it was hard to do that with just one handgun, so I asked the props team if there were any handguns that could fire more than 10 bullets. They showed me a Beretta, which can hold 15 or 16 rounds. When I saw that, I realized that one gun would not be enough. So I had the characters use two guns and all of a sudden I thought about that scene in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz where [Roy Scheider] is tapping his leg like a drum. Once I got that musical rhythm, I was like, ‘That’s it!’”
The Killer (1989)
If A Better Tomorrow was an appetizer for Woo's action movie theatrics, The Killer serves as a meaty main course. Chow takes center stage as a reluctant hitman plagued by guilt after one of his kill shots blinds a nightclub singer. A compelling blend of vintage Golden Age of Hollywood melodrama and ultra-modern action techniques, the film culminates in a wild church shootout that’s straight out of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.
I learned so much from Peckinpah for The Killer. I’m a Christian, and my idea is that the church should be like heaven, and then the evil of mankind breaks in and ruins heaven. They destroy everything, but fortunately we’ve got our heroes who are fighting for justice and defending [heaven]. So that was the idea behind that scene.
Hard Boiled (1992)
Woo’s farewell to his Hong Kong roots casts Chow and Tony Leung as two cops on a quest to take down a local criminal ring. Speaking of wild endings, the extended climax takes place in a hospital where Chow shelters a baby with one arm while firing multiple rounds at attacking enemies. It’s a sequence that’s since inspired a number of homages, including a memorable scene in James Gunn’s recent Superman reboot.
Originally, I had read this sad news story about a psychopath in Japan who injected poison into baby food and put it in a supermarket. To me, babies represent beauty and hope. When we started shooting, Tony Leung’s character [was inspired by that story], but I realized that it be a bad influence for young people in Hong Kong to see one of their idols doing that. So I changed Tony Leung’s character to an undercover cop and at the end, he and Chow Yun-Fat are saving babies — they’re saving the last hope for the world.
Hard Target (1993)
Woo’s first Hollywood production paired him with Jean-Claude Van Damme at the height of his star power. And the self-styled Muscles from Brussels tried to flex his might during production, even arranging for an alternate cut of the film. But Woo credits producer Sam Raimi with having his back at every turn.
I was so fortunate to have Sam Raimi as a producer. Because it was my first Hollywood film, I didn’t know that movie stars could have final approval on the script and the final cut. But Sam pushed everyone away and let me make my own movie. We did have a few problems on set, but he and the other producers helped me solve them.
I had decided that I wanted to try a new style of kicking for Van Damme. But I was surprised that, in America, the director had to design all of the action and not the stunt coordinator. In Hong Kong, the stunt coordinator would demonstrate some new kind of action and show it to me, but not here. But as long as you designed something that would make Van Damme look beautiful and like a hero, we would do anything. Most of the time he was like a child; he wanted to do a good job.
Broken Arrow (1996)
Fresh off his career-reviving performance as one of Pulp Fiction’s hitmen, John Travolta went full bad guy in Woo’s second studio feature, playing a rogue air force officer trying to get his hands on a loose nuclear bomb aka a “broken arrow.” It’s a larger-than-life heel turn that Travolta would later revisit in movies like Swordfish.
I was a little nervous because John Travolta had never seen any of my movies. But Quentin Tarantino was a great help: he got a copy of The Killer and showed it to Travolta. That copy wasn’t subtitled, but Quentin remembered all the lines and explained it to Travolta word by word. After the movie finished, he turned to Quentin and said, “I want to be Chow Yun-Fat!” So that’s how he got the character for Broken Arrow — he’s just playing it like Chow Yun-Fat.
Our stunt coordinator and second unit director on the movie was also the stunt coordinator on Speed, but one thing I didn’t know was that he didn’t like slow motion! I told him that slow motion was my style, and he came to me and said, “OK, John, I did a slow motion shot for you.” It was 33 frames, which is the slowest action I ever had in a movie. [Laughs] He liked natural speed, but if I don’t use slow motion, I don’t see myself in the movie.
Face/Off (1997)
The crown jewel of Woo’s Hollywood career remains a singular action epic, one that’s built around the seemingly crazy idea of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage swapping faces and mannerisms. But it’s the kind of crazy that’s totally brilliant.
John and Nic look so different, so we had to use body movement to convince the audience that they could be each other. Before shooting, they spent two or three weeks together in a house. John would ask Nic, “How do you walk when you’re playing a bad guy?” And Nic would say, “I walk like a ballet dancer. What would you do as a good guy?” So they spent a lot of time just imitating each other. I came up with the idea of the hand on the face gesture. It’s like a family gesture — when someone is upset, you just put your hand on their face.
The speedboat chase at the end was a lovely thing from our stunt team and the special effects team. I was asking people to make the one boat jump from behind and crash through the other boat and was like, “That’s big enough for me.” But they went even further! They were like, “John, how about some dynamite?” It was a lovely team, but they were always trying something crazy.
Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)
An underappreciated entry in Tom Cruise’s action franchise, Woo’s take on Mission: Impossible echoed the original intent of letting each director put their own stamp on the material. In this case, Woo’s stamp included a healthy dose of Alfred Hitchcock in addition to his own auteurist sensibilities.
I was very influenced by North by Northwest, which was so romantic and suspenseful. Tom Cruise is very much like Cary Grant in the movie — he’s handsome and elegant. At that time, he was hoping to use a different director to make a different kind of Mission: Impossible, so that allowed me to make a North by Northwest version.
Tom also tried to do all different kinds of experiments and find a certain style of action for himself. Like the rock climbing was an experiment and the kung fu fighting was an experiment. But he had his doubts about the two guns thing. I told him, “Tom, I guarantee you that if you hold two guns and slide while shooting them, it will look beautiful.” The whole crew was pushing him, too! After he tried one take, he said, “Can I have more?” [Laughs]
(This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity)
