AKA DIP HUET SEUNG HUNG HONG KONG AVAILABLE ON LIMITED EDITION 4K UHD and BLU-RAY, from ARROW VIDEO: 20TH APRIL RUNNING TIME: 110 mins REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera Ah Chong, a hitman, accidentally blinds a singer named Jennie Chan when he fires his gun close to her eyes. He watches over her and eventually befriends her, but then learns from her doctor that if she doesn’t undergo a corneal transplant, she’ll lose what remains of her sight. Chong sets out to kill a high-ranking triad boss to pay for the operation and then retire.

Meanwhile Detective Li Ying performs a botched undercover sting and is demoted for shooting a criminal inside a tram and unintentionally causing the fatal heart attack of a hostage. When Chong’s client betrays him, sending men to kill him, he’s spotted by Li who’s puzzled when Ah Jong puts himself in more danger by rushing a wounded child to hospital, and becomes determined to track him down…. What is John Woo’s greatest movie?

That is the question. I know that many don’t just consider Face-Off to be his greatest American film [and he hasn’t topped it since] but to be his greatest full stop, and I also know for definite that there’s one person in the world who roots for Once A Thief. Personally I’d nominate a certain other film, but until we hopefully get there let’s say for now that it’s down to the more popular The Killer vs Hard Boiled. 1992’s Hard Boiled, given a wider cinema release in the West, during a time when interest in Hong Kong movies was suddenly on the rise – it was lovely for us older fans to see so many discovering and loving the joys of these often amazing films which were getting proper [or should I say “legit?”] home video releases – and recently reviewed with considerable praise here by Mocata, probably seems to have the edge in popularity and adulation.

But for me the 1989 pic wins. One’s love of a film can admittedly be down to nostalgia, and I can vividly recall being blown away by it when I rented it on video [English dubbed of course] way back when, and came away not just realising that Hong Kong films can be amazing even without martial arts, but realising that I’d seen one of the greatest action movies ever. This wasn’t just bullets and blood, this was a filmmaker elevating mass gunfire into cinematic art – and yes, I’d already seen a few Sam Peckinpah greats, but the bullet ballet dances didn’t come anywhere near as frequent in those.

But what also affected me so much – and this is where for me Hard Boiled falls short – was the emotion of the piece. I cared so deeply about the three main characters, I felt their pain, their conflict, their humanity, in a film that was just so romantic in the widest sense of the word – while still being hugely violent! 1986’s A Better Tomorrow was an enormous Hong Kong hit in spite of conflict between Woo, producer Tsui Hark and Golden Princess Studios over “creative differences”. However, similar conflict over A Better Tomorrow 2 saw the studio release a heavily cut down film that Woo wasn’t happy with and had Hark ask co-producer Terence Chang to fire Woo from Golden Princess.

When Chang refused, Hark began rejecting Woo’s new film ideas. Fortunately Chow Yun-fat, who’d become a big star due to A Better Tomorrow, stepped in and insisted that Golden Princess fund part of The Killer. Woo went into filming with only a short treatment, working out scenes during production.

The original idea of having Li romance Jennie as well as Chong had to be nixed because singer Sally Yeh’s touring schedule couldn’t accommodate the lengthy [for a Hong Kong movie] shoot of 83 days, 30 of which were for the climax. This also meant that the intended ending featuring Jennie and Li wasn’t shot. Wong Wing-Hang was hired to be the director of photography but had to leave the set for an extended period of time, so Peter Pau took over.

The scene where Danny Lee chases a gunman onto a tram had residents thinking that it was a real gunfight and phoning the police. The bloody injury you sometimes see below Yun-Fat’s left eye is real and was caused by a squib; rather than go to the hospital, he suggested they keep filming and use it. Hark was extremely unhappy with The Killer and wanted major re-cuts; its success when it premiered in Taiwan made him so angry that he [allegedly] threw things out of his office window.

Woo hadn’t finished fine tuning the film and cut it from 130 minutes down to 110 mins. It opened poorly domestically but improved and won several awards; the overseas attention it got aroused much jealousy from Hong Kong producers, directors and studios. An opening night time shot of Hong Kong becomes one of the outside of a church in the rain, Inside the white, candle-filled interior sits a man, Ah Chong, peaceful and contemp;ative.

His handler, Fung Sei, entering with a briefcase containing money, a photograph of his next target, and the guns he’s going to need, asks him, “since when were you a believer”? “I’m here for the serenity, sitting