John Woo - Hong Kong Career

Hong Kong Career

In 1969, aged 23, Woo was hired as a script supervisor at Cathay Studios. In 1971, he became an assistant director at Shaw Studios, where he was mentored by the noted director Chang Cheh. His directorial debut in 1974 was the feature film The Young Dragons (鐵漢柔情, Tiě hàn róu qíng). In the Kung fu action genre, it was choreographed by Jackie Chan and featured dynamic camera-work and elaborate action scenes. The film was picked up by Golden Harvest Studio where he went on to direct more martial arts films. He later had success as a comedy director with Money Crazy (發錢寒, Fā qián hàn) (1977), starring Hong Kong comedian Ricky Hui.

By the mid-1980s, Woo was experiencing professional burnout. Several of his films were commercial disappointments, and he felt a distinct lack of creative control. In response, he took residence in Taiwan. It was during this period of self-imposed exile that director/producer Tsui Hark provided the funding for Woo to film a longtime pet project, A Better Tomorrow (1986).

The story of two brothers—one a law enforcement officer, the other a criminal—the film was a financial blockbuster. A Better Tomorrow became a defining achievement in Hong Kong action cinema for its combination of emotional drama, slow-motion gunplay, gritty atmospherics, and trenchcoat-and-sunglasses fashion appeal. Its signature narrative device of two-handed, two-gunned fire fight within confined quarters—often referred to as "gun fu"—would later inspire American filmmakers such as Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowskis.

Woo would make several more Heroic Bloodshed films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, nearly all starring Chow Yun-Fat. These violent gangster thrillers typically focus on men bound by honor and loyalty, at odds with contemporary values of impermanence and expediency. The protagonists of these films, therefore, may be said to present a common lineage with the Chinese literary tradition of loyalty among generals depicted in classics such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

Woo gained international recognition with the release of The Killer (1989). Widely praised by critics and audiences for its action sequences, acting and cinematography, The Killer became the most successful Hong Kong film in American release since Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973) and garnered Woo an American cult following. Bullet in the Head followed a year later, which Mr. Woo has stated he still considers his most personal work. However, Bullet in the Head failed to find an audience that accepted its political undertones, and failed to recoup its massive budget.

Among the director's American admirers are Martin Scorsese and Sam Raimi (who has compared Woo's mastery of action to Hitchcock's mastery of suspense). Woo accepted a contract to work in America at a time when the 1997 handover of Hong Kong was imminent.

His last Hong Kong film before emigrating to the United States was Hard Boiled (1992), a police thriller that served as the antithesis of his previous glorification of gangsters. Most notable of its numerous action scenes is a 30 minute climax set within a hospital. One particular long take follows two characters for exactly 2 minutes and 42 seconds as they fight their way between hospital floors. On the Criterion DVD and laserdisc, this chapter is referenced as "2 minutes, 42 seconds." The film was considerably darker than most of Woo's previous films, depicting a police force nearly helpless to stop the influx of gangsters in the city, and the senseless slaughter of innocents. As a result, it did not match the success of his other films.

John Woo: Interviews (ISBN 1-57806-776-6) is the first authoritative English-language chronicle of Woo’s career. The volume includes a new 36-page interview with Woo by editor Robert K. Elder, which documents the years 1968 to 1990, from Woo’s early career in working on comedies and kung fu films (in which he gave Jackie Chan one of his first major film roles), to his gunpowder morality plays in Hong Kong.