John Woo's 'Hard-Boiled' is the best action-crime film ever made. Fight me.

Thirty-three years ago this month, John Woo’s crime thriller “Hard-Boiled” had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and immediately rewrote the action-movie playbook. Its dizzyingly choreographed scenes of bullet-ridden mayhem, a staple of the run-and-gun Hong Kong filmmaking scene of the '70s and '80s from which it flowered, influenced a generation of filmmakers including the Wachowskis (“The Matrix”), Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”), Chad Stahelski (“John Wick”), Gareth Evans (“The Raid”), Timo Tjahjanto (“Nobody 2”) and Guy Ritchie (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”).

It was also the film that proved to be a career launchpad for Woo. Subsequently, he began working in Hollywood, turning out the likes of “Face/Off,” “Mission: Impossible II” and “Windtalkers.”

Today, “Hard-Boiled” is enjoying a resurgence of interest thanks to a recent 4K digital and physical re-release from Shout Studios. There are also theatrical showings, such as the Hong Kong Cinema Classic screenings that Houston’s River Oaks Theatre will be doing on Sunday and Tuesday, that allow fans who never had the chance to see it on the big screen to do so. (Another Woo film, “A Better Tomorrow” from 1986, is also being shown Friday and Monday.)

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Starring Chow Yun Fat (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) as the clarinet-playing policeman Tequila Yuen and Tony Leung (“In the Mood for Love”) as conflicted undercover cop Alan, “Hard-Boiled” has a rather standard-issue plot. Tequila has to root out a particularly vicious gang and doesn’t have many qualms about how he goes about doing it.

What sets the explosive “Hard-Boiled” apart is the execution (or, actually, executions considering the high body count). With his graceful, gliding camera work, use of slow motion and elaborately staged set pieces that push the boundaries of both credibility and creativity, Woo took the mundane and made it magical. Could a policeman who’s not an athlete launch himself forward horizontally while firing guns in both hands, hit his target and land without becoming a patient on “The Pitt”? Probably not, but, damn, it sure looks cool. 

Of course, “Hard-Boiled” didn’t come out of a vacuum. The crazy kineticism of Hong Kong cinema began attracting attention in the U.S. and Europe in the '80s, though much of it, such as the work of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, leaned more in the direction of comedy. 

There were also the more lush, circumspect, period-piece, swordplay “wuxia” films such as King Hu’s “Come Drink with Me” (1966), Tsui Hark’s “A Chinese Ghost Story” (1986), Ronny Yu’s “Bride with the White Hair” (1993),Wong Kar-wai’s “Ashes of Time” (1994), Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” (2002) and “House of Flying Daggers” (2004) and, of course, Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000).

Then there were the urban crime dramas that most resemble “Hard-Boiled,” such as Johnny Mak’s “Long Arm of the Law” (1984) Ringo Lam’s “City on Fire” (1987) as well as Woo’s earlier works, including “The Killer” (1989) and the appropriately titled “Bullet in the Head” (1990).

What all of these films shared is a visceral sense of movement, perhaps a result of the explosion of cheaply made (and badly dubbed) but acrobatic Hong Kong kung-fu movies in the '60s, that made most American action films of the era seem slow off the mark. Where American movies often felt leaden and lumbering, Asian action was lithe and limber, like ballet with weaponry instead of pointe shoes.

Nowhere is that more true than in “Hard-Boiled,” a prime example of what some action-film fans call “gun-fu cinema.” From the first ten minutes, in which a theoretically tranquil tea shop with fluttering, caged birds, becomes a shooting gallery to the stunning, final 40-minute crescendo of life-ending chaos inside a hospital, “Hard-Boiled” shows off Woo at his blood-soaked, operatic best.

There’s a story involving Woo that underscores the point.

At some point in the early '90s, Tarantino supposedly was talking to a studio executive who minimized Woo’s talents but admitted that he can direct an action scene. To which Tarantino responded, “Yeah, he can direct an action scene and Michelangelo could paint a ceiling!”

If that didn’t happen, it certainly should have.