So it's with a heavy heart that I revisit one of John Woo's masterpieces - Hard Boiled (1992). Starring Hong Kong film legends Chow Yun Fat and Tony Leung, Hard Boiled is possibly the most out of control action film ever made. When Woo shoots an action scene he shoots a fucking action scene - bullets explode through people and the surroundings as bodies, windows, doors and furniture are blasted to smithereens. One of the most shocking aspects of Woo's violence, besides its sheer beauty, is his use of innocent bystanders to heighten the realism. I can't recall another film where villains slaughter a room full of invalids! Or fire heavy duty automatic weapons at babies! This kind of jaw dropping mayhem would never be allowed in Hollywood - thus the watering down of Hong Kong's finest artists.

In Hard Boiled we follow detective Tequila (Chow Yun Fat) as he pursues a case involving gun runners. In a typical high octane Woo prologue we witness Tequila battle it out with gangsters in a crowded teahouse - bullets fly as civilians are slaughtered and Tequila famously slides down a bannister blazing away, toothpick in mouth. After Tequila's partner gets gunned down he flies through a storm of exploding shells, does a forward roll over a table filled with flour sacks, and lands white faced an inch from his partners killer. He blasts a shot square blank in his face getting a baptism of splattered blood onto his ghostly pale mug. Pure Woo baby! Too bad for Tequila it turns out the man he kills was an undercover officer.

Meanwhile a vicious gangster Tony (Tony Leung) goes about slaughtering stool pigeons and rivals. We are shocked to find out Tony is actually an undercover officer - yet he is so undercover we aren't sure were his alliances are. Inevitably Tequila and Tony team up to take out the head gun runner who has stashed his cache in the basement of a hospital. A battle ensues at the hospital that has to be seen to be believed as the cops square off against the gangster and much shit gets blown up. Amazingly the hospital set is approximately 1/3 of the film! Just nonstop chaos.

John Woo is somehow able to translate seemingly silly Soap Opera dialogue and scenarios into situations inwhich we actually care about his characters. His films (dubbed Heroic Bloodshed) combine the "ballet of violence" of Peckinpah's finest with bizarre pathos into a mix that is beyond strange. It's with his action scenes and taboo breaking violence that Woo, and Hard Boiled, find their fans.

Highlights include - an amazing shoot-out in a warehouse where Tequila takes on a whole army of gangsters. People get run over by motorcycles, blasted backwards by shotgun blasts, blown up by grenades and mowed down in a variety of ways - a scene in the hospital where the head bad guy Johnny (Anthony Wong) guns down a room full of cripples because "the innocent must die"! - the mind blowing, ridiculously long tracking shot, following Tequila and Tony blasting through various hospital corridors - and the show stopping baby pissing scene.

Only in Hong Kong cinema can you have a scene like this - as Johnny prepares to blow up the hospital, Tequila grabs a baby while savagely killing gangsters. The gun runners get shards of wood in the jugular, have their faces pulverized by glass, and get their chests blown out by Tequila's high powered firearms. As the gunfight ensues Tequila sings a lullaby to the blood splattered child! Johnny detonates the explosives as Tequila tears a rope of wires from the ceiling. As Tequila runs for the window his pants catch fire from the explosion, causing him to stop and run around in a panic. The baby begins pissing down Tequila's body extinguishing the flames! Tequila replies, "you saved the day you little pisspot" before flying through the window and landing with the aid of the wires! Unbelievable!