More than three decades ago, John Woo reinvented the action movie. He did so not just with his deliriously choreographed action scenes, but with his unabashedly melodramatic tales of violent men who bonded with their adversaries. His revolutionary Hong Kong “heroic bloodshed” films — A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard-Boiled (1992) being the best known — broke through in the West in the early 1990s, influencing everyone from James Cameron to Quentin Tarantino. Right around then, Woo himself came to the U.S., making his Hollywood debut with the Jean-Claude Van Damme-starring Hard Target (1993), a modest hit that has, over the years, come to be regarded as a classic.
At their best, Woo’s American pictures showcased his ability to blend mind-melting action scenes with a kind of romanticism and emotionality genre films often looked down on; in that sense, Face/Off (1997) remains unmatched. The mixture worked financially as well: Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off, and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) were all big hits. But then, Woo’s style of filmmaking seemed to vanish, as the world of action divided itself into gritty, self-important shakycam on one side and elaborate, VFX-infused fantasy and sci-fi on the other.
Now, it’s fair to say that we are undergoing a revival and re-appreciation of Woo’s work. The Criterion Collection recently released his 1979 film Last Hurrah for Chivalry. A Face/Off 4K comes out next month.
