Intended as his final movie for the Hong Kong film industry before leaving for the bigger paydays awaiting him in Hollywood, 1992’s Hard-Boiled was also something of a Greatest Hits package for director John Woo. Featuring his frequent leading man Chow Yun-Fat, the film playfully recycles many of the themes and tropes the two of them had developed in their prior collaborations, one piled atop another and escalated to heights of delightful absurdity.

The cumulative expression of everything he’d done to that point, and a little bit of self-parody at the same time, Hard-Boiled may not be the best John Woo film, but it could well be the most John Woo film, in much the same way that North by Northwest was made to be the most Hitchcockian of Hitchcock thrillers. Both pictures are wildly entertaining entries in their respective genres, and gain immeasurably from some background history with their filmmakers’ reputations and previous work.

Title:	Hard-Boiled (a.k.a. 辣手神探)
Year of Release:	1992
Director:	John Woo
Watched On:	Blu-ray
Also Available On:	DVD Amazon Prime Video (VOD rental)

Amusingly, of the movies that John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat made together, Hard-Boiled is the only one where Chow doesn’t play a criminal. This time, he stars as cool cat Hong Kong cop Tequila Yuen. With a signature toothpick gritted between his teeth and double-fisted .45s blazing away in both hands, Tequila is a one-man army on a mission to take out all the Triad gun-smugglers in the city. That this frequently means violent shoot-outs in the middle of crowded urban areas that recklessly put the lives of innocent civilians at risk doesn’t seem to concern him too much, yet somehow Tequila doesn’t come across as callous or cruel. He’s a charming guy, who spends his off-hours playing clarinet in a jazz club (hilariously called “Jazz Club”) and has a flirtatious relationship with his inspector superior, Teresa (Teresa Chang).

When hotheaded Triad boss Johnny Wong (the great character actor Anthony Wong) kills off an older and more stable rival to consolidate power, Tequila must join forces with undercover detective Ah-Long (“Alan” in some translations, played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai) to find Wong’s hidden armory and take down this emerging threat to the city. Their efforts culminate in a standoff at a public hospital, where Triad members are disguised as cops, real cops are disguised as doctors and orderlies, and absolute chaos reigns when Wong locks the doors and starts shooting indiscriminately at anyone not on his payroll. Armed with heavy firepower and seemingly unlimited ammunition, Tequila and Ah-Long blast their way through dozens upon dozens of Wong’s henchmen on their way to the boss, while other cops work to evacuate the building and Teresa tries to save a nursery full of newborn babies before the whole place blows to Kingdom Come.

Filled with impossibly acrobatic stunts, over-the-top violent gun battles that rack up staggering death tolls, and beautifully-choreographed mayhem as exhilarating as it is ludicrous, Hard-Boiled feels like every John Woo action movie – if not every Hong Kong action movie of the 1980s and ’90s that didn’t star Jackie Chan or involve kung-fu – smashed into one. It’s hugely fun, and needless to say, the action work is all incredible. This is John Woo at both the peak of his abilities and unrestrained by concerns about ratings boards, or star egos, or focus groups, or studio politics, or any of the other nonsense that would hinder his later Hollywood career.

In terms of Woo’s best movie, I still favor The Killer, which has a stronger plot and characterizations. Hard-Boiled is more of a cartoon, and the first two-thirds of the picture have some long stretches between the action scenes that could be tightened up a bit. However, once it roars to its climax, the last half-hour or so is pure balls-to-the-wall adrenaline, including an amazing three-minute unbroken tracking shot that still dazzles in the complexity of its orchestration by combining gunfire, stunts, explosions, and huge plot turns without cutting away.

The Blu-ray

Much like Woo’s The Killer, Hard-Boiled has had a frustrating history on home video. Although a Laserdisc release from the Criterion Collection in the mid-1990s was a respectable effort for its day, the following Criterion DVD in 1998 amounted to a straight port of that non-anamorphic letterbox transfer, and could have been improved even at that time. Subsequent DVDs from other labels had their own issues.

The first Blu-ray for Hard-Boiled in 2007 was authored as a bonus feature onto the same disc as a video game sequel called Stranglehold and could only be played in a Sony PlayStation 3. A few years later, the Dragon Dynasty label issued a proper standalone Blu-ray edition of the film. I don’t have either of those available for comparison at the moment, but reviews weren’t great. Judging by the Dragon Dynasty copy of The Killer (which I do have), I wouldn’t expect much in the way of quality there.

I’ve told the story of the Hong Kong Rescue bootleg label and the sad fate that befell their operation in my own review of The Killer (linked at the end of this article). Released in 2019, Hard-Boiled was the outfit’s first “fan restoration” effort. I ordered it in 2020 and only had to wait what was, at that time, the normal expected delay of several weeks before a copy got to me. One did eventually arrive without my needing to put up a fuss about it or demand a refund. The situation would deteriorate quickly within another year.

Hong Kong Rescue promoted the Hard-Boiled Blu-ray with the following description: “The only genuine HD transfer in the world, sourced from Japan. Color corrected to match the original theatrical print. Image quality FAR exceeds releases by Dragon Dynasty and anyone else for that matter.” As with The Killer, even if an improvement over official releases, the results are greatly hampered by limitations of the source available.

The full-screen 16:9 image is very grainy, noisy, flat, and mildly washed-out. Sharpness and detail are generally acceptable, but colors are drab. While I can believe that the source is true high-definition, it looks like an old analog broadcast master. I believe that it probably does look better than whatever Dragon Dynasty put out, but the movie still needs a proper remaster from a new film scan of better elements. Whether such a thing will ever happen is a more difficult question to speculate about.

The original Cantonese-language soundtrack is provided in the choice of a PCM 2.0 stereo track sourced from the Criterion Laserdisc or a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track from the Dragon Dynasty Blu-ray. The Criterion 2.0 is by far the better option with livelier and more robust gunfire. The 5.1 remix is very flattened and overly noise-reduced in comparison. That said, even on the Criterion track, crashes and explosions are still kind of dull, and the musical score has little depth or range. It also appears to be a true stereo mix with no noticeable surround activity.

Only one English subtitle track is available, with no notes on its origin. The translation seems adequate. English and Mandarin dubs are also offered in Dolby Digital 5.1 should anyone want them as curiosities.

The only extras on the first disc in the set are three audio commentaries and one track playing a pair of back-to-back podcast episodes about the movie:

• John Woo and producer Terrence Chang (Fox Lorber DVD)
• John Woo, Terrence Chang, filmmaker Roger Avery, critic Dave Kehr (Criterion Laserdisc/DVD)
• Film producer/historian Bey Logan (Dragon Dynasty Blu-ray)
• “Podcast on Fire” / “CriterionCast”

Disc 2 features a Taiwanese extended version of the film that runs about three minutes longer than the standard Hong Kong theatrical cut. (Hong Kong Rescue bizarrely claimed it was “20-30 minutes longer” for some reason.) The entire movie is upconverted from a standard-def source with burned-in Chinese and English subtitles, and is covered in scratches and other film damage. Most of the additions amount to small extensions to existing scenes.

Following that are a bunch more supplements culled from discs from around the world, and some seemingly from YouTube. These include a making-of documentary, interviews, a guide to filming locations, an alternate opening scene, a trailer gallery, and a “Body Count” montage (final tally: 320). A ten-minute black-and-white John Woo student film is difficult to watch with no audio. A comparison between Hard-Boiled and the Stranglehold video game sequel has way too much long-winded plot recapping, and you can safely jump past the first 19 minutes of its half-hour length.

Related

• The Killer (1989)
• Hard Target (1993)