Hard Boiled [DVD] [1992] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Hard Boiled is without a doubt one of my favourite John Woo films, its up there with the likes of the Killer and Better Luck Tommorow. When I saw this dvd going for so cheap I was quick to snatch it up... The problem is, this prism leasure version, is the terrible english dubbed release.

If I knew that this version was dubbed, I sure as hell wouldn't of bought it. I love hard boiled, but this version does not do it justice.

The great performances, the stunning action scenes and the breathtaking editing syle of this film is cheapened by stupid american accents. I'm going to purchase the collector's edition soon to get the soundtrack this film truly deserves.

In short, if you can't be arsed reading subtitles... You shouldn't watch foreign films. These over-dubs need to stop, they cheapen so many great movies.

If you feel the same way as me, avoid the prism leasure version of this film.

I'm only giving it 3 stars cause this great film, even with the bad over-dudbbing, is still watchable. I'd usually give this 5.

This and 'The Killer' were the two breakout films that got John Woo noticed in Hollywood and its not hard to see why. In an era of action films ruled by Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme, it was John Woo who breathed new life into the genre with his own brand of coolness.

'Hard Boiled' is, on paper, a conventional thriller about a reckless Hong Kong cop who is out for revenge against a gun-smuggling ring. Along the way, he encounters an undercover cop already on the case who he eventually partners up with. Although the story is pretty ordinary, lacking the emotional drama of 'The Killer', the action is non-stop and represents Woo at the top of his game.

Once again, Woo delivers awesome shootouts and insane stuntwork in a relentlessly entertaining action flick. In fact, you can break the film down into a series of set-pieces which include a eyepopping shootout at a teahouse and a bloodsoaked 40 minute finale inside a hospital. The standout moment of the film is a one-take action sequence that follows the two men through the hospital and is nothing short of amazing.

Chow Yun Fat returns as the hard-boiled cop and Tony Leung is his undercover ally. Both men exert coolness throughout the film and their scenes together are always entertaining. 'The Killer' is may have a better storyline but as far as action goes, you can't get any better than 'Hard Boiled'.

'John Woo is God' screamed the UK posters with somewhat gleeful blasphemously. Well, not quite, but in his long-passed Hong Kong prime he could certainly give the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse a run for their money.

The plot is elementary: renegade cop finds his destiny entwined with a mysterious hitman as he tries to track down a gang of gunrunners. Respect for human life is pretty low on the agenda: the cops here are more worried about the one of their own who gets killed than the couple of hundred innocent bystanders that get caught up in the crossfire (when one of the villains uses a waiter as a shield, it's the cop's bullets that kill him, while the logic of the police evacuating the patients of a hospital directly into the line of fire of several machine gun toting maniacs is bonkers even by HK action-movie standards). Although there are undercurrents of (highly selective) morality and divided loyalties, what Woo is about is action, with Hard Boiled offering more firepower in its two hours than Hollywood did in the entire 1990s.

There are some dazzling setpieces, with an interesting move from slow-motion to normal speed within individual shots, and for stylish violence Woo is hard to beat but, unfortunately, he overplays his hand with the hospital finale where the bodycount moves into four figures and the constant need to top himself leads to overkill, both literal and figurative. It's here that the film really needs to take a breather for a reel or so - the action, though occasionally repetitive (there is at least one Nexican standoff too many), is not the problem, the pacing is. The action may be bigger, the body count may be higher, but compared to the brilliantly staged raid on the arms warehouse - one of the great action scenes of the decade - it tends to lose your involvement.

The two leads play well off each other, Chow Yun Fat exuding star quality as the maverick cop and Tony Leung excellent as the hitman/undercover cop all too aware that he has lost his identity and morbidly aware of the possibility of an anonymous death, and for all my reservations about the second half, this is still easily one of the best action movies currently available on DVD - but be careful which version you get...

Prism and Tartan's budget release only offers the dubbed English language version, and it's not a good dub - and to make matters worse, the film is cropped into fullframe from its original widescreen ratio; Tartan's original release had the proper widescreen ratio with Cantonese soundtrack and non-removeable subtitles as well as an interview with John Woo and the UK trailer (though their initial release only included a trailer); while The weinstein Company's Dragon Dynasty two-disc US NTSC DVD includes plenty of extras (audio commentary by Bey Logan, interviews with Woo, Terence Chang, Philip Chan and Kwok Choi, a location guide and two trailers) but the subtitles translate the dubbed English soundtrack rather than the Cantonese original and the transfer is slightly cropped. The Dragon Dynasty US Blu-ray drops the interviews with Chang, Chan and Choi as well as the trailers and has a very weak upscaled transfer.