John Woo is an open admirer of Sam Peckinpah, especially his revisionist western The Wild Bunch. He cites the end shootout as a major inspiration for his approach to action sequences, primarily its liberal use of slow motion and brutal violence, both of which add emotional weight to what would have just been another shoot-em-up.
With The Killer, Woo achieved an overall high-point that balanced thematic content with eye-popping violence. The story (itself an homage to the French thriller Le Samourai) follows a hit man (Chow Yun-fat) who swears to go straight after blinding a club singer in a firefight, only to be pursued by an obsessed policeman (Danny Lee), who he has more and common with than both see at first. A melodrama to its core, the film teeters towards soap-opera qualities on a few occasions, and its foreign sensibilities in themes like masculine loyalty and friendship have been unintentionally laughable to many western viewers (some have even called it "homoerotic"); then, after luring viewers into a false sense of security, BANG! Dozens of squibs. Improbable pyrotechnics. And endless ammunition. This cycle repeats itself throughout the picture, culminating in the final confrontation in a church, where classical music blasts through the explosive imagery, gunshots and perpetual death cries.
But then, with Hard Boiled, though the story became slightly more basic in structure and moral exploration, his handling of action was even more dynamic. The slow-motion is incorporated seamlessly into gritty firefights, which take place in everything from a tightly-spaced restaurants and a dark warehouse to an open pier and labyrinths of hospital hallways. The hospital confrontation in particular (nearly half an hour of non-stop, close-quarters thrills) features a single-shot segment, where our two heroes (Yun-fat again, joined by Tony Leung) make their way through one floor of the building, taking out what seems to be an endless wave of triad goons; then, they enter an elevator, reload, talk for a bit, and continue their crusade on a different floor. If Hard Boiled doesn't quite equal The Killer in symbolic beauty and emotional impact, it still exceeds it in terms of kinetic fluidity and physics-breaking spectacle.
These brilliant companion pieces set a benchmark for action films worldwide (influencing the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez) and proved that even something as brutal as death can be quite beautiful (and fun) on celluloid.
*Both films can be tracked down in out-of-print collector's editions from The Criterion Collection; in addition, they're available in a more common release from Dragon Dynasty
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