Hard-Boiled
It starts with tequila slammers and jazz, Inspector “Tequila” Yuen’s place to find himself away the pressure and madness of his duties, an officer of the Royal Hong Kong Police tasked with taking down the gangsters and gun smugglers who are infiltrating the city, a sting operation at the Wan Loy Teahouse turning into wild west carnage as bodies of police, black marketeers and bystanders pile up, among them Yuen’s partner.
An important witness killed in the incident, a mole within the organisation, there is another, Long an undercover police officer who has embedded himself within the structure and has begun to rise, forced to compromise his ideals, attempting to avoid directly killing anyone but inevitably given no alternative if he is to avoid suspicion, Yuen only realising they are on the same side after has tracked Long down, possibly exposing them both.
Directed by John Woo from a screenplay by Gordon Chan and Barry Wong, the latter of whom died during production and to whom the film is dedicated, the plot of Hard-Boiled (辣手神探; literally Hard Boiled Detective, Yuen disparaged in the final scenes for not being hard enough) was released in 1992, the shenanigans and double-crosses of the plot almost secondary to the ubiquitous action which dominates almost every moment of the two hours.
Starring Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon‘s Chow Yun-fat and Infernal Affairs‘ Tony Leung with Anthony Wong as Johnny Wong, the Triad who eliminates enemies and allies alike in his bid to crawl to the top, Philip Kwok as his most ruthless enforcer and Teresa Mo as Ching Sze-lau, Yuen’s girlfriend and recipient of Long’s coded messages within the department, never knowing their origin, dodging hails of bullets in a war with embedded spies and traps within traps it is difficult to know who can be trusted.
The result being that all targets seem to be game, friendly fires as much a danger as that of the gangsters, the incongruous exception being the baby tanks in the maternity ward of the hospital where weapons are stashed in the morgue, Hard-Boiled is a preposterous film which never allows rationality to diminish the action, explosive in its overblown pursuit of the “bloodstained glory” of flying bodies and overacted deaths amidst the pyrotechnics, a spectacle of destruction.
Restored in 4K, Arrow’s new edition of Hard-Boiled is heavily armed with commentaries from Woo, film journalist Drew Taylor, film historian Frank Djeng, producer Terence Chang, critic Dave Kehr and filmmaker Roger Avary, new interviews with Woo, Wong, Chang, Chan, composer Michael Gibbs and others, archive documentaries and interviews with Yun-Fat and Leung, deleted and extended scenes, trailers and galleries.
Hard-Boiled is available on 4K UHD Blu-ray from Arrow now
