Gun-Fu Hustle: Celebrating the action cinema of… | Little White Lies

Long Read

Gun-Fu Hus­tle: Cel­e­brat­ing the action cin­e­ma of John Woo

27 Mar 2017

Words by Nick Pinkerton

Illustration depicting a man wearing sunglasses, with figures and scenes from action films in the background. Dominated by orange, brown and black tones with geometric shapes and patterns.
Illustration depicting a man wearing sunglasses, with figures and scenes from action films in the background. Dominated by orange, brown and black tones with geometric shapes and patterns.
In praise of the Hong kong adren­a­line junkie and archi­tect of the time-hon­oured bul­let ballet.

The phrase nev­er use a tooth­pick when an axe would suf­fice’ might read­i­ly be applied to the action cin­e­ma of John Woo. He is a film­mak­er who would rarely fin­ish some­one off with one clean shot if he could use a hun­dred juicy squibs instead. And giv­en his druthers, he might just pre­fer to bring a bazooka to the dance.

When a hench­man gets capped in one of Woo’s peak-peri­od action movies, it is con­sid­ered good form for the shoot­er to keep on pump­ing lead into his vic­tim as they go into a con­vul­sive Saint Vitus Dance, shed­ding fat drops of blood like a Gold­en Retriev­er who’s just been for a swim. He’ll then fol­low the mov­ing tar­get corpse as it tum­bles off the side of a promon­to­ry, or rolls down a stair­well. For a char­ac­ter with a more promi­nent role, the first few shots caught are just warn­ings, a cue to flop down and deliv­er return fire from a recum­bent posi­tion before spring­ing back up to rejoin the fray. At his peak Woo didn’t build set pieces – he emp­tied armouries, unleashed firestorms.

I was a young movie­go­er dur­ing the flow­er­ing of Hong Kong cin­e­ma that pre­ced­ed the 1997 Han­dover to Main­land Chi­na, accom­pa­nied by a mass fight to Hol­ly­wood by many of the best and bright­est artists includ­ing, in 1993, Woo. Not a week goes by that I don’t feel grate­ful for the fact that, for at least once, I expe­ri­enced what it was for cin­e­ma itself to feel young. By the time that I was mid­way through high school, Woo had already achieved some­thing like house­hold name sta­tus, thanks in no small part to the phe­nom­e­non that was 1997’s Face/​Off. (The fol­low­ing sen­tence is includ­ed on the film’s Wikipedia page: Typ­i­cal­ly this film is ranked among the best movies on plan­et Earth by its inhabitants.”)

Woo has remained shoul­der to the plow through the sub­se­quent decades, though after his career in the States stalled – not entire­ly deserved­ly; the line for Windtalk­ers apolo­gia starts here – he began to work in and for the spir­it-crush­ing Main­land indus­try. Even if not for the play of exter­nal forces Woo’s stock might have fall­en, for his brand of over-the-top-of-the-top film­mak­ing is far removed from the dic­tates of mod­ish min­i­mal­ism and shaky cam docure­al­ism that held sway through much of the 21st cen­tu­ry – though the tides may be turn­ing, and some­thing like Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire car­ries a sul­phurous whiff of Woo’s old thou­sand-gun salute fusil­lades. Still, I fear we are at risk of los­ing sight of just how good Woo was at his best – which is to say, the very best.

Chows debonair hitman upends a poker table with his foot to catapult a pearl grip revolver right into his hand.

Woo was born in Guangzhou at the height of the Com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion, after which his Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly ed to Hong Kong, where they sur­vived the mas­sive con­fla­gra­tion that swept through the shan­ty­towns of Shek Kip Me in 1953. His con­ver­sion to cin­e­ma came ear­ly, and he was among the young Turks in Hong Kong who grav­i­tat­ed towards the films of Patrick Lung-Kong, a film­mak­er who’d man­aged to absorb some of the style and ambi­tions of var­i­ous nation­al New Waves and reflect them in his Can­tonese-lan­guage pictures.

These were made when most big-mon­ey local pro­duc­tions, like the wux­ia-pian and Huang­mei opera movies com­ing out of the Shaw Broth­ers’ Movi­etown stu­dios, were made in Man­darin, and accord­ing to hide­bound for­mu­la. After bear­ing wit­ness to the 1967 Hong Kong riots – lat­er depict­ed in 1990’s Bul­let in the Head – Woo got his first indus­try gig at Cathay Stu­dios, then moved to Shaw, where he became an assis­tant to direc­tor Chang Cheh (One-Armed Swords­man, Five Dead­ly Ven­oms), who made action pic­tures that employed large­ly male casts.

Woo made his direc­to­r­i­al debut with 1974’s mar­tial arts pro­gram­mer The Young Drag­on, and over the next ten years he was at work film­ing sword fights, knock­about com­e­dy, and every­thing but the sort of con­tem­po­rary gang­ster dra­mas that he would become famous for. Still, his lat­er pre­oc­cu­pa­tions were already well in place in the likes of 1979’s Last Hur­rah for Chival­ry, a wux­ia set in a world of sun­dered codes whose title would do fair­ly well for a Woo ret­ro­spec­tive. Woo has spo­ken of the prox­im­i­ty between his guns-and-gang­sters films and clas­si­cal Chi­nese folk­lore, a point made explic­it at the open­ing of 1989’s Just Heroes, in which a Peking opera per­for­mance under the cred­its fore­shad­ows the film’s sto­ry of a crime syn­di­cate war of succession.

After his debut Woo shut­tled between Gold­en Har­vest and Cin­e­ma City & Films Co. His first rock em sock em heavy ordi­nance action movie, Heroes Shed No Tears, star­ring Eddy Ko as a sol­dier of for­tune on mis­sion to top­ple a Thai drug lord, was shot in 1984, then shelved as unre­leasable by Gold­en Har­vest, only appear­ing a cou­ple of years lat­er when Woo had proven him­self very, very mar­ketable. Cin­e­ma City, mean­while, were feed­ing the push­ing-40 Woo a diet of light come­dies, like 1985’s Tai­wan-shot Run, Tiger, Run, a bit of non­sense fea­tur­ing some lov­able urchins Tsui Hark as a chin-whiskered grand­pa. It was Tsui, who Woo had met in 1977 short­ly after the younger man’s return from New York City, who under­wrote Woo’s break­through through his Film Work­shop Co Ltd Pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, a movie built from the basic mate­ri­als of a film that both men admired, Lung Kong’s Sto­ry of a Dis­charged Pris­on­er – though the result­ing film was unlike any­thing that had come before.

The first cou­ple of times that lead flash­es in 1986’s A Bet­ter Tomor­row the shootouts are rel­a­tive­ly restrained – an ambush by a Tai­wanese syn­di­cate, a kid­nap­ping attempt gone awry – but then Mark, the flip­pant, match­stick- chew­ing hood in the duster jack­et straight off the back of Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï, gets his big num­ber, and there’s no doubt that Woo is enter­ing unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry. Mark brazen­ly strides right into his enemy’s lair, plant­i­ng back­up weapons in pot­ted plants as he seems to be pet­ting his date” through her blue silk chif­fon, all cap­tured in volup­tuary slo-mo. It’s not just a mat­ter of get­ting the job done, but of doing it with style.

Then, the killing floor: Two dual wield­ed Beretta 92Fs bark­ing away in close-up, the pis­tol slide clap-clap­ping as the deep­est mag­a­zines in all of cin­e­ma are emp­tied into fleshy tar­gets. Sub­se­quent scuf­fles offer what will become famil­iar aspects of the Woo reper­toire: som­er­saults and slides and head­long dives between safe cov­ers and bod­ies flung willy-nil­ly by explo­sions and lit­tle inven­tive grace notes, like Chow let­ting off rounds while glid­ing through a park­ing garage on a mov­ing dolly.

Illustration of a man firing guns with explosions and birds in the background.

A Bet­ter Tomor­row was a mas­sive hit, and John Woo had a new métier – try­ing to do the same thing again, but more­so. For some artists work­ing in the max­i­mal­ist mode the com­pul­sion to top them­selves, to go always big­ger and bet­ter, becomes a kind of impris­on­ment – take for exam­ple the case of DW Grif­fith – but for Woo it act­ed as a lib­er­a­tion. His most trust­ed col­lab­o­ra­tor would become Chow, the star of the 1980 tele­vi­sion gang­ster melo­dra­ma The Bund who’d sub­se­quent­ly lan­guished in come­dies and the occa­sion­al action pic­ture like 1982’s The Head Hunter, one of the pro­to­types of what west­ern observers would begin to dub gun-fu,” or the hero­ic blood­shed” style.

Chow starred in four movies for Woo in Hong Kong, and was the soloist in some of his most valiant set-pieces. In 1989’s The Killer, Chow’s debonair hit­man upends a pok­er table with his foot to cat­a­pult a pearl grip revolver right into his hand; in 1987’s A Bet­ter Tomor­row II he ven­ti­lates an entire Cosa Nos­tra fam­i­ly with a SPAS-12 shot­gun; in 1992’s Hard Boiled, his super­cop Tequi­la glides down the ban­nis­ter in a Chi­nese restau­rant, guns blaz­ing the entire way.

Woo’s style had many for­bears. His blood­baths owe a debt to those of Sam­my Peck­in­pah, who by smooth­ly inte­grat­ing mate­r­i­al shot at vari­able speeds to cre­ate what biog­ra­ph­er David Wed­dle calls a dynam­ic con­tin­u­um” was fol­low­ing a path forged by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa in his 1954 film Sev­en Samu­rai. One might also look for Woo’s antecedents in the Mukokuse­ki Action films pro­duced by Japan’s Nikkat­su Cor­po­ra­tion begin­ning in the late 1950s – the news that Woo is slat­ed to direct a remake of Sejun Suzuki’s 1963 film Youth of the Beast may mark the last, best hope for Woo’s artis­tic rebirth. Cer­tain­ly there is some­thing of the heed­less ener­gy of a Nikkat­su juve­nile gang pic­ture in the furi­ous out-of-the-box speed with which Woo begins his Viet­nam Era epic Bul­let in the Head, and also of Jacques Demy and West Side Sto­ry – for like his admir­er Quentin Taran­ti­no, there is a touch of the musi­cal in much Woo does.

Dif­fi­cult to see even at the height of Woo’s fame, Bul­let in the Head is his sin­gle great­est work, squar­ing off with the likes of 1978’s The Deer Hunter 1979’s Apoc­a­lypse Now on their own turf with the sto­ry of three tried-and-true Hong Kong friends (Tony Leung, Jacky Che­ung, and Waise Lee) who go on a war prof­i­teer­ing mis­sion in Indochi­na and find them­selves pinned down behind North Viet­namese lines. The Viet Cong are absolute sav­ages, but cut-throat cap­i­tal­ism doesn’t offer any­thing supe­ri­or in place of their maniac’s rev­o­lu­tion – in this fall­en world, the val­ues that Woo extols are those of loy­al­ty and char­i­ty, betrayed in Bul­let in the Head when Lee’s char­ac­ter suc­cumbs to gold fever and entre­pre­neur­ial spirit.

The show­man and the moral­ist coex­ist in Woo with no appar­ent dis­cord, the marks of two for­ma­tive influ­ences: Chang Cheh’s raz­zle-daz­zle and Lung Kong’s social out­rage. Final­ly and essen­tial­ly, Woo remains today a devout Luther­an, and his fil­mog­ra­phy is over­run by church­es with break­away stained glass and gore-soaked pietas. Woo’s bul­let bal­lets would be more imi­tat­ed than his con­vic­tions. In Just Heroes he pokes fun at his new trend­set­ter sta­tus among the likes of Ringo Lam, work­ing in a bit of busi­ness in which a wannabe gang­ster goes through a house before a shootout stow­ing pis­tols in vas­es with the stat­ed intent of imi­tat­ing Chow Yun-Fat’s Mark in a Bet­ter Tomorrow.

Gun-fu was inter­na­tion­al­ly con­ta­gious; before Jack­ie Chan, Woo bridged Hong Kong and Hol­ly­wood more suc­cess­ful­ly than any fig­ure since Bruce Lee. In Tarantino’s 1997 film Jack­ie Brown, Samuel L Jackson’s Ordell Rob­bie could cred­it The Killer for shap­ing rearm-pur­chas­ing trends in Los Ange­les – The Killer had a .45, they want a .45… they don’t want one, they want two.” Hol­ly­wood is fick­le mis­tress. When Amer­i­can projects dried up, Woo had been out of Hong Kong for years on either side of the Han­dover, and he was unable to keep work­ing with the con­ti­nu­ity enjoyed by local inde­pen­dent pro­duc­ers like John­nie To and Stephen Chow.

And so he turned to the Main­land mar­ket, that morass of mon­ey and com­pro­mise that coarsens even the great – see Chan mak­ing tourist board pif­fle or Chow in a suc­ces­sion of Wong Jing medi­oc­ri­ties. As dif­fi­cult as it may be to square the direc­tor of the anti-Com­mu­nist Bul­let to the Head with the John Woo who appears in Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty birth­day card The Found­ing of a Par­ty from 2011, Woo has made his peace and kept work­ing. The house almost always wins the pic­ture game, a fact that this direc­tor who returned time and again to the top­ic of the per­ni­cious pow­er of mon­ey must recog­nise – though hope­ful­ly he still has a cou­ple more left in the chamber.

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