The high-octane homo­eroti­cism of John Woo’s Hard Boiled

“Are you some­where feel­ing lone­ly or Some­one lov­ing you!” Clean up the erro­neous punc­tu­a­tion and gram­mar in this hand­writ­ten love note and you’ve got a line from Lionel Richie’s ​‘Hel­lo’, one of the slushi­est pop bal­lads to top the charts in the 1980s. So how is it pos­si­ble that we’re read­ing these lovey-dovey lyrics in an action film as tough and testos­terone-infused as John Woo’s Hard Boiled? Well, to give a lit­tle con­text, this quote is sim­ply a cod­ed mes­sage sent by under­cov­er cop Alan (Tony Leung) to inform the chief on his progress in bring­ing down some Hong Kong arms dealers.

The decep­tive appli­ca­tion of this one line could be regard­ed as a micro­cosm of the film itself, which reg­u­lar­ly val­i­dates emo­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty through insis­tent­ly macho fram­ing. By sur­round­ing its cen­tral ​‘bro­mance’ between Alan and offi­cer Tequi­la with firearms and fatal­i­ties, Hard Boiled is its own form of cod­ed mes­sage that pro­vides a safe space for emo­tion­al­ly inhib­it­ed action fans to explore their most guard­ed feel­ings of affec­tion and sex­u­al frus­tra­tion with­out fear of embarrassment.

That Lionel Richie ref­er­ence cer­tain­ly isn’t the only exam­ple of a ​‘sen­si­tive’, ​‘poet­ic’ or ​‘effem­i­nate’ sur­face mask­ing man­ly intent. Alan also com­mu­ni­cates his covert mes­sages via flower deliv­er­ies, with white ros­es being a par­tic­u­lar favourite of his. The origa­mi cranes that Alan rou­tine­ly fash­ions may have been inspired by the hand­i­craft of Woo’s own daugh­ter but, with­in the con­text of the film, they sym­bol­ise every man that he has killed.

Mean­while, a book labelled ​‘The Com­plete Works of Shake­speare’, an assort­ment of bird­cages (those clas­sic sym­bols of repres­sion) and, again, a box of flow­ers all prove to be decep­tive pack­ages con­ceal­ing the guns of killers and gangsters.

Yet, for the audi­ence, the con­ceal­ment goes even fur­ther, in that any ama­teur psy­chol­o­gist could iden­ti­fy the gun as a uni­ver­sal penis sub­sti­tute, much like the shiny red sports car that Alan dri­ves. While square-jawed men involved in covert oper­a­tions are forced to assume per­sonas and trans­fer ​‘mas­cu­line’ ideas and objects under ​‘fem­i­nine’ guis­es, the film itself embod­ies a con­verse anal­o­gy for the cod­ed, indi­rect ways in which men social­ly inter­act and express them­selves under a lay­er of masculinity.

This is an action film for any­one who’s watched the mus­cle­bound blus­ter of your aver­age Sylvester Stal­lone or Steven Sea­gal flick and deri­sive­ly exclaimed, ​“Well somebody’s com­pen­sat­ing for some­thing.” Whether it’s through con­scious or uncon­scious intent, Woo finds pro­fun­di­ty in this ​‘com­pen­sa­tion’, por­tray­ing the phys­i­cal vio­lence inflict­ed upon and received by its char­ac­ters as a para­dox­i­cal means of both expres­sion and sup­pres­sion of mixed emo­tions. These men can­not open­ly love each oth­er, and so they shoot each other.

Still, vio­lence and love are nev­er too far sep­a­rat­ed. When betrayed gang­ster ​‘Uncle’ Hoy realis­es that his time is up, it is out of fond­ness and respect that he insists that Alan is the one who shoots him. Lat­er, Alan beats up fel­low infor­mant Foxy (Wei Tung) in order to save his life – while putting on this dis­play of bru­tal­i­ty for the ben­e­fit of Tri­ad wit­ness­es, Alan slips a cig­a­rette lighter into Foxy’s chest pock­et in order to deflect a bul­let shot at his heart.

But the scenes that come clos­est to let­ting Hard Boiled’s con­cealed homo­eroti­cism bub­ble to the sur­face are those fea­tur­ing pow­er-hun­gry arms deal­er John­ny Wong, a sadis­tic, metaphor­i­cal dick-waver who mocks the cops for their mea­gre .38 pis­tols and pos­ses­sive­ly aspires to bring Alan under his wing (when Alan com­ments that Wong has ​‘the Midas touch’ in his busi­ness, Wong blunt­ly responds, ​“Will I have you as well?”). The cli­mac­tic stand­off between Tequi­la and Wong, with Alan as a hostage, is an unnerv­ing depic­tion of sex­u­al­ly charged dom­i­na­tion in which Wong exploits Tequila’s affec­tion towards Alan, forc­ing Tequi­la to slap him­self in the face while stat­ing, ​“I am impo­tent.” and even order­ing him to take off his trousers.

While some of the film’s biggest devo­tees would no doubt recoil at the notion that their favourite cin­e­mat­ic adren­a­line fix car­ries these psy­cho­sex­u­al under­tones, the sub­ver­sive hid­den lay­ers of Hard Boiled don’t mock or under­mine the film’s glo­ri­ous spec­ta­cles of male one-upman­ship so much as they enrich and per­haps even jus­ti­fy them. To under­stand the under­ly­ing sen­si­tiv­i­ty of this film is to under­stand the buried desires and emo­tion­al dynam­ics that sup­port many an enter­tain­ing shoot ​’em up and bud­dy movie.

When the action film is so often dis­missed as the most minor and insub­stan­tial of major gen­res, it’s encour­ag­ing to think that your aver­age con­sumer of stylised gun­play may be get­ting more sus­te­nance from these flicks than even they realise.

Read more about the films of John Woo in LWLies 69: The Free Fire issue.