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John Woo Filmography
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John Woo: Hong Kong career history
In 1969, when he was 23, Woo got a job as a script supervisor at Cathay Studios. In 1971, he became an assistant director at Shaw Studios, where the famous Chang Cheh took him under his wing. In 1974 he directed his first feature film The Young Dragons (Tie han rou qing). Choreographed by
Jackie Chan, it was a Kung fu action film that 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 (Fa qian han) (1977), starring Hong Kong comedian Ricky Hui.
By the mid-1980s, Woo suffered a burnout. His films were failures at the box office and he retreated to Taiwan in exile. John Woo— once called the new comedy king of Hong Kong— seemed to be on the way out. It was then that director/producer Tsui Hark provided the funding for Woo to film a longtime pet project called A Better Tomorrow (1986). The story of two brothers— one a cop, the other a criminal— the film became a sensational blockbuster.
A Better Tomorrow singularly redefined Hong Kong action cinema with its emotional drama, slow-motion gun-battles and gritty atmosphere. The film's trenchcoat/sunglasses fashion sense, and combat style of using a gun in each hand in close quarters— often referred to as 'Gun fu'— would later be imitated by Hollywood filmmakers such as
Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.
Together with leading man
Chow Yun-Fat, John Woo would make several more Heroic Bloodshed films in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His violent gangster thrillers typically focused on men who were steadfast in their honor and friendship, even though such values forced them to become outcasts in a rapidly-changing world that was more concerned with money and progress. In this respect, Woo's characters were modern-day knights who used guns instead of swords.
The most famous of these movies would be The Killer (Die xue shuang xiong) (1989), which brought Woo international recognition. Often called the best Hong Kong movie ever made, it was widely praised by critics and fans for its action sequences, acting and cinematography, and often referred to as "the perfect action film." With
The Killer becoming the first Asian film since
Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon to be released in the United States, John Woo became a cult favorite.
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood took notice. By this time, John Woo had many American admirers, including the likes of
Martin Scorsese, and
Sam Raimi - who compared Woo's mastery of action to Hitchcock's mastery of suspense. Enormously impressed with his work, American executives green-lighted a contract for Woo to work in America. With the 1997 handover of Hong Kong fast approaching, Woo decided that it was indeed time to leave.
John Woo's last Hong Kong film was Hard-Boiled (1992). It featured a Hollywood-scale spectacle in its second half with policemen and criminals waging war inside a hospital - while helpless patients are caught in the crossfire. The film climaxes with supercop
Chow Yun-Fat singing a lullaby to a baby while gunning down incoming gangsters.
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