Hard Boiled review John Woo's outrageously explosive 1992 cop thriller is pure action mayhem

"Hard Boiled irresistibly combined two of the most compellingly beautiful men in Hong Kong cinema: Tony Leung and Chow Yun-fat. As Inspector Tequila Yuen, Chow became legendary in this film for the scenes in which he has to carry around an adorable baby during the final, entirely bizarre shootout in a hospital."

"it is pure outrageous mayhem in which Woo showed that he was a pioneering maestro of the PAE Pointless Action Explosion as well as the Mexican-standoff set piece, in which a pair of sweaty, homicidal guys statically point guns in each other's faces, mutually hypnotised by the sudden stalemate, a kind of Zen duplication/opposition of killer and victim."

"Yuen is a tough cop who in his spare time plays clarinet in a jazz club, and wears floaty, loose-fitting white shirts of the sort often modelled by Andrew Ridgeley. Working behind the club's bar is Woo (played by John Woo himself, in cameo), a grizzled retired officer who gives him fatherly advice."

Hard Boiled is a 1992 Hong Kong cop-thriller directed by John Woo that exemplifies his signature style of pointless action explosions and Mexican standoff sequences. The film stars Chow Yun-fat as Inspector Tequila Yuen, a tough cop who plays clarinet in a jazz club, and Tony Leung as Alan, a stylish triad assassin working undercover for police. After Yuen's partner is killed in an opening teashop shootout, he becomes determined to catch the criminals involved in a turf war between aging mobster Uncle Hoi and triad chief Johnny Wong. The film is particularly memorable for its climactic hospital shootout scene where Yuen carries a baby while protecting newborns, with cotton buds placed in their ears to shield them from gunfire. This inspired sequence humanizes the protagonist and showcases Woo's creative approach to action filmmaking.

Read at www.theguardian.com