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  • 3 hours ago
The Hero Of Heroic Bloodshed A John Woo Documentary
Transcript
00:00:01Once you start to understand sort of the world of John Woo, nobody comes close to
00:00:06making the movies that he makes, made and still makes.
00:00:09John Woo movies inspire me, like seeing something down and grounded and very gritty.
00:00:15You know, it feels like, it feels so real, it feels like a documentary, a stylistic documentary
00:00:20style where you feel like you can be there, you smell it, you taste it.
00:00:26He completely redefined not just Hong Kong action cinema, but action cinema everywhere
00:00:31around the world.
00:00:31You know, the Better Tomorrow films, The Killer, Hard Boiled, everything he did.
00:01:07John Woo kind of started as an assistant director to the martial arts director, Jiang Che, working
00:01:17on, I guess, films that were, in a lot of ways, similar to the themes that sort of developed
00:01:23in his later cinema, in his kind of later action cinema, with sort of the gangsters.
00:01:30And Jiang Che's kind of known for his kind of concern with sort of heroic martial arts masculinity,
00:01:36with kind of sacrifice and bloodshed in his heroes.
00:01:40And also sort of the themes of, I guess, kind of brotherhood, the sort of the bonding between heroes.
00:01:47And John Woo very much kind of saw himself as kind of being very much a sort of disciple of
00:01:52Jiang Che.
00:01:53Jiang Che was very much his mentor in a lot of ways.
00:01:56And if you look back at his early films through the 70s, you know, he was working in Kung Fu,
00:02:00he was working in martial arts cinema during the 1970s as well, like films like Last Hurrah for Chivalry, for
00:02:06example.
00:02:06And then even into the early 1980s, he was doing quite an interesting mix of films,
00:02:10which you could watch and you might not think this is a John Woo film.
00:02:14Something like To Hell with the Devil, for example.
00:02:16A very funny, early Hong Kong sort of spooky comedy type of film,
00:02:20which actually also, I think, foreshadows some of his Christian themes later.
00:02:23But it's not really until he gets to his heroic bloodshed films, his bullet ballet films from 1986.
00:02:33That's what we associate John Woo with doing.
00:02:36But at the same time, he has a much more varied, I think, and rich career than you actually associate
00:02:42him with.
00:02:55You know, after Bruce Lee died, you know, and the whole Hong Kong film business,
00:03:01they are all looking for some new material.
00:03:05You know, they want to have, they all wanted to make a big change.
00:03:11You know, since Bruce Lee got so much of great impact and so much success for the whole business,
00:03:21and so they want us to make a change.
00:03:26You know, before Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong movie wasn't that great.
00:03:33You know, everything had, you know, so old-fashioned and poor, you know,
00:03:42and, you know, it seems like only one single film, you know, in Hong Kong.
00:03:49But, you know, in 1980, you know, we can, all of a sudden, we can develop a huge change.
00:04:01So, fortunately, we have a very, very open, you know, financial, you know.
00:04:07They love movies, they love movies, and then they like to support any new idea.
00:04:15So, the whole Hong Kong film business, they all wanted to try something new, anything new, you know.
00:04:26So, all of a sudden, you know, there were all kinds of movies, you know, that the movie had been
00:04:33made, you know.
00:04:34Like the police story, you know, no matter the police story or gangster or love story or art film.
00:04:42And the audience really love to see a change.
00:04:47So, we are so lucky, you know, to, besides we have got a very good financial, you know, for their
00:05:00support.
00:05:01And by the meantime, we have no fear.
00:05:05We have no fear to do anything we wanted to do, anything we like, you know.
00:05:15So, like, I always dreaming to make a movie in a restaurant way, you know, not like a traditional Hong
00:05:24Kong film, you know.
00:05:25The traditional Hong Kong film is very simple, you know, right.
00:05:28They short without sound, and then they just short what they need, you know.
00:05:35So, what I like to use is the Western system, you know, and the technique to shoot the movies.
00:05:47And everything was so simple.
00:05:50So, if we have an idea, and then we just go to the financier, and then they only ask, what
00:05:59do you want to shoot?
00:06:00And I say, oh, I want to shoot the story about a cop and a killer.
00:06:06Okay, what's the cash?
00:06:08So, in fact, oh, and then how much?
00:06:13About $30 million.
00:06:16Okay, go ahead.
00:06:17Do it.
00:06:33One of the ways that you can understand his latest cinema is kind of taking those sort of themes of
00:06:38martial arts heroism,
00:06:39which are drawn from sort of a whole sort of long literature of sort of martial arts stories in Chinese
00:06:50culture,
00:06:51around the kind of the figure of the wuxia, the sort of the martial hero.
00:06:56It's sometimes translated as a sort of the knight-errant of Chinese cinema, if you like, with this kind of
00:07:02code of honour and brotherhood and righteousness.
00:07:05Often very sort of anarchic, rebellious, and violent characters in Chinese history, but also sort of known for their sort
00:07:12of their honesty,
00:07:13for fulfilling promises, for their brotherhood, for helping out other sorts of people in distress and taking things into their
00:07:22own hands in a sort of very positive way as well.
00:07:25So, one of the ways of sort of understanding the Jungwoo cinema is kind of taking these sort of historical
00:07:31themes that were kind of there within the martial arts cinema of the early 70s,
00:07:36where he was kind of starting out and then translating them into the contemporary world of Hong Kong and sort
00:07:44of doing a sort of a genre sort of jump between the sort of the martial arts cinema and kind
00:07:50of the gangster film, if you like.
00:07:52And then sort of being able to sort of merge in influences from Hollywood, things like The Godfather, from French
00:07:59cinema, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samurai, I think is a very kind of key sort of touch point within that.
00:08:05And also, of course, kind of Japanese gangster films as well.
00:08:08And he's very influenced by kind of people like Sam Peckinpah and the slow motion in that.
00:08:12It's essentially the Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in terms of Westerns.
00:08:20And then maybe the getaway in terms of modern day crime.
00:08:24And technically, if you look at the way they both shoot action scenes, the use of multiple cameras and little
00:08:34moments of slow motion and lots of men striding towards camera with corpses falling around.
00:08:43That's very much a Peckinpah style.
00:08:46So in a sense, he's sort of taking these very specifically Hong Kong martial arts traditions and then sort of
00:08:52reimagining them and perhaps reimagining them at a sort of a time of kind of complicated crisis in Hong Kong
00:09:00as something that addresses the sort of the time and place and setting of his own life and of the
00:09:09contemporary world.
00:09:31I think one of the things that's very important in A Better Tomorrow is Chow Yun-Fat's kind of image
00:09:39in the film.
00:09:40So there's a very particular version of kind of masculinity that's involved with it.
00:09:45And Chow Yun-Fat, I mean, he's also someone who's he'd made it very big in television and was also
00:09:52kind of struggling to break into sort of successful cinematic roles.
00:09:56And I think John Wood sort of very much seen a kind of a what we call a kind of
00:10:03an analog for himself in Chow Yun-Fat as a kind of a bit of an underdog.
00:10:07For him, it is being able to layer that sensitivity and that emotion on top of that machismo, which is
00:10:15why Chow Yun-Fat is so amazing at having all of those layers and elements.
00:10:20You know, he's all of that all at once. He's he is this this Cary Grant of it all. Right.
00:10:26But he is also, you know, a Bronson, a Stallone, you name it, like he is tough and cool, but
00:10:33but he's he's certainly this this romantic gentleman as well.
00:10:39He's got it all. Chow Yun-Fat is one of the most iconic actors in the history of Asian cinema,
00:10:45I would say, and rising to stardom in the 1980s.
00:10:49He became a definite cultural icon and the important face of Hong Kong's golden age of action films.
00:10:55His performances in A Better Tomorrow turned him into a cultural phenomenon.
00:11:00So he was cool and charismatic and emotionally layered.
00:11:05The trench coat and sunglasses and pistols become instantly iconic and being remembered by the audience.
00:11:25When John Woo started making action cinema with A Better Tomorrow in 1986, he very much kind of sparked off
00:11:33a new sort of craze for a new kind of gangster film in Hong Kong.
00:11:36But a lot of the sort of the people that sort of came off to him tended to make very
00:11:41kind of gritty, realistic kind of gangster films.
00:11:45Whereas I think one of the things that sort of famously marks out John Woo's films as being special and
00:11:50being different is this kind of element of fantasy,
00:11:53something that's kind of ecstatic in the violence.
00:11:57It sort of enters into a sort of a sort of a sacred ritual, magical sort of aestheticized sort of
00:12:05space.
00:12:06So this is kind of moment of sort of violence, but also this kind of transcendence of kind of violence,
00:12:12which I guess in some senses he's getting from, you know, what sort of fascinated him about the cinema as
00:12:17a sort of a space as a child.
00:12:19And then also the sort of, I guess, very sort of, in a lot of ways, also kind of sacred
00:12:24violence within the films of his mentor, Jiang Che.
00:12:45So we had A Better Tomorrow and A Better Tomorrow 2, fantastic films. I love them.
00:12:49But I think with The Killer, he took everything he did in those films and he notched it up another
00:12:53couple of levels.
00:12:54He took Chow Yun-Fat in particular and he gave him this completely iconic classic role for him.
00:13:01Everything about it revolves around the screen persona which Chow Yun-Fat had been developing slowly but surely throughout the
00:13:071980s.
00:13:08He upped the bloody brotherhood in it. He made everything about the relationship between the classic,
00:13:14between like the cop and the killer and the killer has the heart and soul and everything.
00:13:17But what he gives us with The Killer, the action has increased.
00:13:20When we have A Better Tomorrow, we have the relationships.
00:13:22But they are more tied towards family as such, which is great. It works very well.
00:13:26As they feel a bit more like a soap opera and I don't mean that in a bad way.
00:13:30But with The Killer, we have this completely different take of cops and robbers, if you want to put it
00:13:35like this.
00:13:36Technically, who should be the bad guy, the assassin and the cop chasing him.
00:13:39And then we see everything that brings them together throughout the film and it's completely believable and actually quite moving
00:13:44relationship between them.
00:13:46As well as seeing Chow Yun-Fat's motivations for why he's doing everything to get the operation for the site
00:13:51to help the girl he's injured.
00:13:54And so there's so much going on in The Killer, it's an emotional film.
00:13:58It is actually a moving film as well as being incredibly thrilling and giving us…
00:14:02Every film that John Woo did, he notched up the action choreography in his Hong Kong films leading up to
00:14:07Hard Boiled.
00:14:07But The Killer, in a way, is a film where he most perfectly brought together like the melodrama and the
00:14:13action side in it as well.
00:14:14And it makes The Killer one of the greatest, not just action films, but one of the greatest Hong Kong
00:14:18films.
00:14:18So this is the original film.
00:14:19He won't think you will really get any more questions.
00:14:22You won't think you will ever get any more questions.
00:14:24You will never finally get any more questions.
00:14:26You may be able to get a chance.
00:14:26You are you where, Joel?
00:14:29When you are you?
00:14:30Where is Joel?
00:14:30Where is Joel?
00:14:31Where is Joel?
00:14:32Where is Joel?
00:14:34I remember this film.
00:14:38I remember that, I remember that them were several年前,
00:14:49I was very excited to watch the英雄 movie
00:14:57It was the英雄 movie
00:15:00It was very good to watch
00:15:03I was very excited to watch the movie
00:15:07I was very excited to see the movie
00:15:18I was very excited to watch the movie
00:15:20But I remember the first movie
00:15:23It was like a river
00:15:29But I didn't forget to watch the movie
00:15:33How can I describe the movie
00:15:35When I worked with him
00:15:38its before I came to the film
00:15:40I saw- again
00:15:40but as far as you didn't see the movies
00:15:44I thought during a movie
00:15:55I'm still in the background.
00:15:57So...
00:15:58I think that...
00:16:01I'm a young man, and I'm like,
00:16:02I'm like, I'm a big fan.
00:16:04And I'm still in the background.
00:16:07I saw the musician that I was working with.
00:16:09I saw the musician that I was very interested in.
00:16:10He's got a lot of questions.
00:16:13He's got a lot of questions.
00:16:14And he was...
00:16:16He was very detailed.
00:16:17He saw a lot of things in the background.
00:16:20I saw a lot of things in the background.
00:16:34I think what is good about The Killer is that it's with very much I think defining
00:16:42Zhang Wu style in terms of this blends of aesthetics with emotional music and also very
00:16:50impactful scenes and then various stylized violence and also I think with a very interesting
00:17:01and from I think what we perhaps know and think now very precise and right decisions
00:17:07of who to work with and and also what actors to be playing in the film
00:17:23I think that the other person has a lot of points
00:17:29because he was very active in the film
00:17:29because he was very active in the film
00:17:34and he also became a very young person
00:17:38I remember in the house
00:17:40that we would always look for him
00:17:46and look for him
00:17:49It's been a long time for me to be able to do this kind of thing.
00:17:53And he was a very good actor in this movie.
00:18:04And he was a very good actor in this movie.
00:18:40In 1980s, Salia was definitely
00:18:44a big star in both Kanto Pop and Mandel Pop.
00:18:47I would say she actually released more Kanto Pop track,
00:18:50but she's from Taiwan, but she grew up in Canada,
00:18:54so she's Canadian as well.
00:18:55So I think she has this quite transnational type of image
00:19:00why she mostly developed her career in Hong Kong.
00:19:04So she has this very powerful voice,
00:19:09which also blends with, I think,
00:19:11a very gentle and emotional touch.
00:19:15And so I think that resonates
00:19:17with a lot of different audiences
00:19:20across the Chinese-speaking world.
00:19:21But at the same time, I think for her music
00:19:23that she also successfully blends Western genres,
00:19:28such as R&B.
00:19:29So yeah, I think those hit songs
00:19:32in both Kanto Pop and Mandel Pop
00:19:34kind of feature into, I think,
00:19:36her status as a superstar.
00:19:54music plays a very powerful role
00:19:56in shaping the film's emotional landscape
00:19:59and also the stylized violence in the film.
00:20:03The film is a masterclass in blending action
00:20:07and sentimentality,
00:20:09and its use of music is central to that balance.
00:20:13A standout motif in the film is the use of the solo piano music,
00:20:17and mostly notable for the scene in the scene featuring Jennie,
00:20:21who's played by Sally Yeh,
00:20:23the blind singer whose fate is tragically tangled with the hitman Arjun.
00:20:27And the recurring piano theme is,
00:20:30which is a little bit sad and romantic,
00:20:33became the film's core theme,
00:20:35which is, I think, something about redemption,
00:20:38something about sadness, but love as well.
00:20:42So I think which kind of reminds us humanity
00:20:46and behind all of the gun scenes and also gun fight.
00:20:50So there are also some of the scenes when Sally Yeh
00:20:54sing in the piano or jazz bar,
00:20:58so which, where that we see
00:21:00diegetic music being used in the film.
00:21:03So automatically, I think music is something in the killer
00:21:07that elevates, I think, the storytelling.
00:21:09Yes, I think it's very good.
00:21:12I think it's very good.
00:21:13And I think that the director of the movie
00:21:15can be filmed in such a very romantic,
00:21:20and with a fight,
00:21:22and the love and the feeling is very heavy and strong.
00:21:26I think that周潤發 and葉善文
00:21:32was very good in this film.
00:21:36When I was in the film,
00:21:37I remember that when I was not able to bring B-Zo out to film
00:21:46And then the time is not enough time to go
00:21:51And then the writer told me to help me
00:22:00I used a camera car
00:22:06When I brought a camera camera, there was a camera camera with me.
00:22:12At the time of the day, I was filming a couple of cars.
00:22:18I was very happy because I didn't try to bring a camera camera to me.
00:22:28It was a huge shock and a huge shock.
00:22:35I think the most important thing in the動作 is that
00:22:42there was a lot to go down the mountain.
00:22:47The most important thing is that the sun is the sun.
00:22:48The sun is the sun.
00:22:50Then the day is early, and the day is early.
00:22:52And then they say they need to do this.
00:22:55I remember that it was only one hour, then the day is early.
00:23:01We also had to set up a car,
00:23:04which was to set up a car on the road.
00:23:08We had to set up a car on the road,
00:23:12and then the car was on the road.
00:23:14In that time, the professor chose a range of 10 meters tall.
00:23:24I remember that 10 meters tall would not look very well.
00:23:30Then I chose a range of 20 meters tall,
00:23:36which would turn the car into the sand.
00:23:39In that time, the professor was very good.
00:23:46He asked if the professor was not worried about it.
00:23:50He said that he was okay.
00:23:55He said that he could do well.
00:23:58He said that he would be happy to do well.
00:24:01I remember that when he did this work,
00:24:04the second work the professor was very clear.
00:24:11At that time, the professor was very strong.
00:24:14He was able to drive this car into the sand.
00:24:18Then there was another one.
00:24:20He was able to drive a car into the car,
00:24:22and then he fell down and fell down.
00:24:27I remember that when we were not able to film the camera,
00:24:32we would be able to film a B group.
00:24:36Some film with the director to film the camera,
00:24:40some film with the camera to film the camera.
00:24:41Some film with the camera to film the camera.
00:24:57I would say that The Killer is the most exemplary John Woo film.
00:25:02It's a textbook. If you want to learn everything about John Woo,
00:25:07like the classical John Woo, this is the film.
00:25:09It really has all the signatures, all the signs,
00:25:13all the cool things and all the enjoyable elements of a John Woo film.
00:25:18And it's a really interesting thing.
00:25:21For example, a lot of people could immediately come out with the idea that,
00:25:25for example, John Woo's obsession with religious symbolism,
00:25:30with the doves, the setting in a small chapel in the countryside.
00:25:35I mean, things that we would see even in his Hollywood days, like Face Off.
00:25:40His love of the idea of the doppelganger and sometimes just simply the double.
00:25:47So the idea is that on the one hand, we have the Chow Yun-fat person.
00:25:52He's a killer with the heart of gold, but it is also a kind of very medieval righteous figure
00:26:00who is supposed to observe his killing for money.
00:26:05But at the same time, he also knows where his boundaries are
00:26:09and he would only do the right thing.
00:26:12He's killing for a purpose.
00:26:15He wouldn't hurt women.
00:26:16He wouldn't hurt a little girl.
00:26:19So a lot of these things are really going on.
00:26:22But at the same time, I have to say, he meets a detective, right?
00:26:26And the detective is totally his double.
00:26:29There's this particular scene in which this detective goes into Chow Yun-fat's flat.
00:26:35And then it's a very old 1930s style flat.
00:26:40And then he's sitting exactly on the spot where Chow Yun-fat was sitting just a few minutes ago.
00:26:47And you have this beautiful montage and also superimposition between them sitting.
00:26:53And it's such a delightfully and beautifully choreographed piece of art.
00:26:59There is a couple of things that John Woo really loves
00:27:03and sometimes are not really being talked about a lot.
00:27:07First of all, his nostalgia and his love of the 1950s Cantonese cinema.
00:27:15Not only are many of these locations recalling or reminding the Hong Kong spectators in the 1980s,
00:27:25the very 1950s, 1960s setting, including Chow Yun-fat's flat
00:27:32and also a lot of these locations, the tenement buildings, a lot of these things.
00:27:38But also I think about the plot itself with a person like Chu Gong being in the movie.
00:27:50And Chu Gong is also such a really interesting character in his short of the days,
00:27:56also Cantonese cinema days, Mandarin cinema days, and then television, like Asia television and also RTV days.
00:28:04And you can totally see that he has always been regarded as one of the most righteous actors in the
00:28:13industry.
00:28:14And then he plays a gangster again with a heart of gold, which is really, really interesting.
00:28:23It immediately brings you back to that kind of 1950s, 1960s.
00:28:28We are all workers and we are all under oppression and we are all here to work together.
00:28:35We take care of each other, no matter what the rich people are going to say.
00:28:42And I think that really carries a lot of that kind of 1950s Hong Kong cinema
00:28:49to the kind of contemporary 1980s Hong Kong audience.
00:28:54Maybe it's our幸運.
00:28:58I don't think that when I die,
00:28:59I don't even have a friend who doesn't want to leave our world.
00:29:03But it's just that I have this passion.
00:29:07I try to be more generous than the film.
00:29:11But it's the most thrilling thing in the film in the film.
00:29:12It's always the most Soda of Voo and Michelle.
00:29:15But it's got its way with the film in the film,
00:29:22because it was really good.
00:29:23It was much more efficient,
00:29:25and the movie was the most beautiful way of playing it.
00:29:25And it was the best of the film.
00:29:25If you saw the film in the film and the film,
00:29:30it was the best of the film.
00:29:30You saw the film in the movie that was the best.
00:29:36I think it's really good.
00:30:06A bullet in the head, which it's hard not to see being on some level.
00:30:11It's about Chinaman Square.
00:30:12I don't think there's any other way to look at it.
00:30:13It's about violent change.
00:30:15It's about oppression.
00:30:16It's about friendship, everything breaking down.
00:30:19We had a lot of Hong Kong films through the 80s into the early 90s, which were looking
00:30:23at friendship under oppression, whether it's China, whether it's a Japanese invasion, everything.
00:30:28I think with A Bullet in the Head, what John Woo's doing, it's an incredibly effective
00:30:34film.
00:30:35It's a bullet in the head, it feels like you're being punched in the gut watching
00:30:38that film.
00:30:39You can feel that there is a political metaphor in the film.
00:30:43There's no other way to see that film.
00:30:45And it's not something which John Woo's ever really done since then, which is a shame because
00:30:49I think the different layers, the different levels you can watch a bullet in the head on
00:30:53make it one of the most hard hitting films of his career, but really just of Hong Kong
00:30:57action genre of that time.
00:30:58Of course, it does address very strongly the idea of a political turmoil and leaving Hong
00:31:09Kong and then the idea of addressing political violence.
00:31:14violence.
00:31:14The idea is just like, how do you address political violence and feeling helpless and what you can
00:31:20do within that.
00:31:22Even when the film was released, I remember that I saw it not quite kosher because I was
00:31:31in 2018.
00:31:31It was actually, I saw it in the Hong Kong International Film Festival and I remember that even in Hong
00:31:40Kong International Film Festival in the catalogue, they would say that this is actually one of the
00:31:45first commercially released films that openly alluded to the 1967 riots.
00:31:53If you think about the way it starts, right, it starts with the 1967 riots in Hong Kong, whether
00:31:57or not you're completely familiar with the historical context as an international viewer, but when
00:32:02you're watching them, you'll get a sense that he's framing, he's shooting it in a way which
00:32:06I think is directly linked to Tiananmen, to Tiananmen Square, the imagery, the way it's used
00:32:11and shown to us, I think that's what is actually at the core of the film and as we can
00:32:17see that
00:32:17as it moves through the film, everything relates back still to this, this idea of like Hong Kong and
00:32:22its identity as a colonised place which has gone from one coloniser to the shadow and the threat of
00:32:28this looming authoritarian oppression, this rule which is coming into it and you could see that in a lot of
00:32:33Hong Kong films really from the start of the 80s throughout when we had like the signing of like the
00:32:37the sign of the Sino-British declaration, Hong Kong was a colony whose fate was being decided not by
00:32:42Hong Kong but by negotiations by other powers and so it was being passed from the British, you know,
00:32:49as a colony with everything that went with that to mainland China, this completely different force
00:32:54which was not likely to be particularly kind or was going to give it something completely different
00:32:58and I think we can see in Bullet in the Head, we can see it framed not just through Tiananmen
00:33:02but still
00:33:03this real sense of anxiety and identity and this this turmoil about what's coming next
00:33:27One of the films sometimes people forget from John Woo is Once a Thief which is actually a really good
00:33:33film and it's where he
00:33:34he kind of combines his action and his brotherhood with his love of like Hitchcock and some of those
00:33:40or sort of like caper films and everything like that and it's I think it's a fantastic film it's
00:33:44really got better and better with age and it's a very interesting one as well because it actually
00:33:48moved into being a TV series too which is something else we don't always think about
00:33:52and it's one of John Woo's films I think especially looking at these Hollywood films like we look back
00:33:58he was having some Hollywood influences I think earlier in his career uh you know towards the end of his
00:34:03time in Hong Kong
00:34:15I also enjoyed such a lot of prochaine films going to do the world
00:34:19but we don't always know it's an incredible film
00:34:24other films I think it's absolutely wonderful
00:34:27love at home
00:34:28is that it's still really good
00:34:31I heard that it is strong
00:34:32He knows that you guys then
00:34:34there are other films
00:34:34and the actors in knowing his future
00:34:34and there are other films
00:34:34and the director needs to know what he needs.
00:34:37He said that we should be able to follow his plan,
00:34:43but sometimes we can think about what more interesting things can be done.
00:34:55I remember that there were a few days in a car
00:35:01There was a car in a car in the car,
00:35:05and the car was on the car.
00:35:08I think I did a lot of things that were difficult to do,
00:35:14and I think it was a challenge.
00:35:16The car was on the car, and the car was on the car.
00:35:23The car was on the car, and the car was on the car.
00:35:27and hit the car and hit the car.
00:35:30At that time, I think I can do the work and the image
00:35:35in this movie can be very beautiful.
00:35:39But the director has a big effect for me.
00:35:46In the day of the day of the day,
00:35:50I told myself that I could do this.
00:35:53That is really difficult for me.
00:35:55But I also had to work with him so many films
00:35:58He knew that he wanted to film this film
00:36:04Then he said he wanted to film this film
00:36:06I would be提早 in the evening of the half
00:36:12I would be ready to film all the time
00:36:16I've done a few hours of the film
00:36:18I'd be ready to film all the time
00:36:25I feel like I'm getting tired of it, so I can feel like I'm getting tired of it.
00:36:32In this movie, many years later, I think this is a kind of classic action.
00:36:55time a lot of Hollywood action movies were very slick and they were cutting up
00:37:00the action and it was very boring. John who was still on the edge of things you
00:37:06know the way he moved the camera the way he staged a fight or staged an action
00:37:11scene so I learned a lot. For me watching movies and it still is you know it's for
00:37:17me it's kind of a a instruction book of how you do things you know how work how
00:37:23do things work so I'm watching those movies over and over again and then see
00:37:27how does somebody come into a room how do the fighting happens which angles do
00:37:32work and and studying them and trying to use that in my work
00:37:53for the Hong Kong movie usually the foreign market yeah it usually only
00:38:01released in the Chinatown theater with a pretty bad copy you know we have never
00:38:10have a world market available world market we have never got this you know so
00:38:19we have and we also have never noticed you know anybody will pay attention in
00:38:27anybody in Hollywood we will pay any attention for our movie
00:38:47the reason it was unusual for a film like Hard Boiled to come round your actual
00:38:55theaters as opposed to your art house places is that there'd been a long time
00:38:59since there was as it were a big exploitation trend that was predicated on
00:39:06films that didn't come from America probably you have to go back to the the
00:39:11kung fu movies of the the early 70s in the wake of Bruce Lee being really popular it's
00:39:17for a there was a window when a whole bunch of Shaw Brothers and Golden Hardest
00:39:22films were comically badly dubbed and released to American grindhouses and
00:39:28drive-ins or indeed in Britain I saw tons of those films they quite often came out
00:39:33as supporting features you'd go and see Frankenstein and the monster from hell a
00:39:39hammer film and it would have a girl with the thunderbolt kick would be the
00:39:43support picture and that was only like two or three years the craze lasted
00:39:48obviously Bruce Lee died and kung fu was cancelled and everybody started making
00:39:54slasher movies or whatever you know took over from that before that there had been
00:39:59spaghetti westerns and of course spaghetti westerns are Italian Spanish films but
00:40:05they kind of look American you know they had Clint Eastwood in or if they didn't
00:40:08have Clint Eastwood in they had some Italian guy who was given a really Anglo
00:40:13name to erase the foreignness and that was that was probably true across Europe as
00:40:20well yeah it's like these films wanted to be American there was a sense that deep
00:40:27down the the kind of heroic bloodshed gangster movies that John Woo
00:40:32specialized in they didn't want to be American but they wanted to refer to
00:40:36American cinema obviously you know I think if you look at look back on it the
00:40:42the the origins of almost all these films are James Cagney gangster movies from the
00:40:49early 1930s things like the public enemy particularly the roaring 20s they have
00:40:55all of the elements that are in John Woo movies you know there are there about
00:40:59vicious gangsters but they're also about sentimental men they're also about
00:41:04relationships between men yeah how to exist outside the law and retain a certain
00:41:11kind of integrity all this kind of stuff that's the Warner Brothers gangster cycle
00:41:15of the of the 1930s then in in Woo's case in particular it's the fact that those
00:41:21films were taken up by French film critics who made their own versions it's
00:41:28it's sometimes if you you know look at these sort of the official record it will
00:41:33say that John Woo's influenced by the the French Nouvelle Vague and that tends to
00:41:37mean you know Godard and Truffaut and they made you know crime movies but what they
00:41:42what they really means is Jean-Pierre Melville I know that Le Samurai with Alan
00:41:48Delon as a hitman is a particular favorite of John Woo and you can see that he goes
00:41:54back to that over and over again Melville made other really terrific French gangster
00:42:00movies with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon and there were other directors did that as well
00:42:05there's for some reason French gangster films didn't click the way Italian westerns did
00:42:11but there were a bunch of them they were well reviewed they were certainly well distributed outside
00:42:18France and obviously they made a lot of an impression on John Woo because there are so many
00:42:24elements of a French version of an American archetype that then become part of a Chinese
00:42:34version and incorporating various other kind of mythic structures plus all sorts of material which
00:42:40is personal to the filmmaker and that then becomes something new that's probably why um there was a
00:42:49craze outside China for these films these were films that were discovered um we didn't tend to see
00:42:56them as they came out it was only from Hard Boiled which I suppose is the last of John Woo's
00:43:02first phase of or actually it's his second phase of Chinese filmmaking there was a whole bunch of stuff
00:43:08in the 1970s which is still a subject for further research but the fact that the killer made such an
00:43:15impression on people that they went and sought out the better tomorrow films they went and sought out
00:43:19bullet to the head um and then when Hard Boiled came out everyone everyone was primed for it and kind
00:43:26of knew what to expect and that was something that plainly resonated I mean it got it got him work
00:43:33outside China for a start um it was something that made not just film fans but film executives
00:43:40sit up and say not not only is this a man we could work with but this is a style
00:43:47that we could adapt
00:44:00although John Woo had a very very long and successful career in Hollywood and still continues
00:44:04to this day uh he had quite an interesting start there I mean Hard Target's a fantastic film but
00:44:09we have Sam Raimi famously brought on set to keep an eye on how things were going
00:44:14and it's quite interesting when you think of it I mean John Woo had just before like given his
00:44:18hard-boiled arguably the greatest action film of all time internationally you know from anywhere
00:44:22he's doing this film in Hollywood we've watched Sam Raimi on set just did they not trust him
00:44:27what do you think he was gonna what do you think he was gonna do um and that's very interesting
00:44:32and
00:44:32you I think it took him a little time not so much to get up to speed in terms of
00:44:36his filmmaking but
00:44:37maybe just to to convince Hollywood like yes this guy's the greatest action director in the world
00:44:41he's a safe pair of you know studios they they wanted John they were scared for John to be John
00:44:48and the irony is you have to let John be John if you want that woo factor I mean it's
00:44:54not going to
00:44:54come any other way but they kept wanting to um have sort of that they wanted what made John so
00:45:03famous
00:45:03and exciting and his movies so special but they were also nervous it just it was too it was hard
00:45:08for
00:45:08them to embrace sort of that that um exciting chaos that John can put on screen but it's not
00:45:15just chaos it's not just violence for violence sake it's not celebrating violence at all and I think
00:45:20that some executives they just it was harder for them either they understood it but they weren't sure
00:45:26how to how to do it in American cinema maybe they were nervous how that would present or maybe they
00:45:31didn't know themselves that I can't really speak to but I would say that for sure there are so many
00:45:37oper so many times they would try to sort of handcuff John uh and not let him do what he
00:45:42wanted to do
00:45:43to make it what it could be uh I think that you know that that moment of Hong Kong cinema
00:45:48where
00:45:49John created this gun fu right he created something that had never come before
00:45:54that kind of energy and excitement you have to let that be unbridled I mean it can't just be
00:45:59something that you um that you manipulate or that you that's a better word for that it's not something
00:46:07that you can that you can harness and say okay I I'm going to just make sure every little element
00:46:13is
00:46:14is perfect before I let you go you have to just you just have to let that magic happen however
00:46:18it
00:46:18happens and I think they were nervous so it didn't so you know yeah they tried to it was hard
00:46:24to make
00:46:24hard to let John be John I think from from watching with the Hollywood perspective in the
00:46:30Netherlands John who was not really somebody that was well known by uh by the audience but for me it
00:46:38was like a god you know it was the Hong Kong cinema the killer and uh all these early movies
00:46:44of him
00:46:44I saw them all at that time though they were not theatrical movies you know so I got them on
00:46:49a video
00:46:50and uh rented them on a video and brought them home and watched them so uh for me hard targets
00:46:56was
00:46:56one of those fucking cool movies the only thing it was it was like John who goes to America you
00:47:02know
00:47:02John who makes it an American movie what was very unique but for me all the movies that I saw
00:47:08till that
00:47:09time were Hong Kong movies his Hong Kong slate so uh so yeah no I I loved hard target one
00:47:15that was
00:47:16really cool because it was like John who going to Hollywood you know
00:47:41his next Hollywood from the broken arrow um it's kind of a mix I think there are some
00:47:45aspects of broken arrow which I think worked very well and we can start to see
00:47:49John who's own sort of a classic Hollywood style like the bullet ballet style starts to come through
00:47:55but it is a film kind of smothered by uh John Travolta's ego I don't think there's any other way
00:48:00to see it this is it's a star vehicle film this was not a John who film in that he
00:48:04was brought in
00:48:05absolutely to bring his style to the film but this was a John Travolta film he was brought in to
00:48:10make
00:48:10a John Travolta vehicle and he still does a very good job he still manages to get his
00:48:15style across he gets some of his themes across some of his visual cues and motifs are absolutely
00:48:19in the film and it's a fun film but I don't if it's Hollywood ones it does feel a slightly
00:48:25less
00:48:25like a John Woo film but on the other hand it was another successful adaptation of him to Hollywood
00:48:30system having this giant blockbuster and proving he was a very safe pair of hands and he didn't need
00:48:35to worry about him it was a great stepping stone for him to do more of what he wanted I
00:48:39think and to
00:48:40work in more of his stuff to have a bit more autonomy in the production of his coming films
00:48:44the follow-up Broken Arrow with John Travolta and Christian Slater is it's kind of similar um it's
00:48:51not anonymous yeah but it's your basic action film it has the the again it's got the opposition of
00:48:59of two movie stars who kind of uh are romantic leads in themselves and you you set them up against
00:49:07each other I remember I saw Broken Arrow at the press show before um reading any anything about it
00:49:15and being kind of surprised that Christian Slater was the good guy and John Travolta was the bad guy
00:49:20it could have been the other way around yeah and they could have flipped roles and it would
00:49:23and of course that leads you to face off which is exactly that
00:49:36John Woo entered my life in a very unexpected way uh we my part running partner Mike and I had
00:49:44written face off uh and sold it in very or optioned it to Warner Brothers in very early 1991
00:49:51the first draft was very futuristic mostly to justify the technology of face swapping
00:49:56so we kind of backed into it in a weird way it wasn't like it just popped into our minds
00:50:02at that point it became well can we pull this crazy idea off
00:50:06but when we were at Paramount um I don't know if it was for budgetary reasons it may have been
00:50:12but
00:50:12I don't think so I mean I think the studio and the producer production company they they wanted us
00:50:21to strip away a lot of the futuristic aspects and it became very clear to uh that they were not
00:50:28interested that that it was just going to sit in development hell and never never get made
00:50:32and it was very discouraging um then sometime after that 92 93 I'm sitting in the new Beverly
00:50:40cinema which then as now is a revival house and I don't even remember what I went to see but
00:50:46there
00:50:46was a trailer ahead of time and it was this insane shoot-em-up trailer and I remember watching it
00:50:52going
00:50:52is that animated like the way people were flying around I'm like is that animation and um so when it
00:50:59the movie came to to the new to be shown my partner and I went and we watched it and
00:51:06it was the killer
00:51:07the Chia Young Fat John Woo famous movie and uh after it was over we looked at each other and
00:51:14said
00:51:14Face Off is a John Woo movie even though we had never heard of John Woo um and of course
00:51:20subsequent to
00:51:21that I just devoured everything I could I could see this is long before I ever met him or even
00:51:26thought I ever
00:51:27would meet him face off which had been sitting in Warner Brothers just on a shelf somewhere the
00:51:46option expired and when the option expired suddenly we the day the option expired all the young executives
00:51:53who had been at Warner Brothers like the people with no power had loved the scripts and they they
00:52:00had all moved on to better companies and better jobs and they had been tracking when the option
00:52:04expired and so we were able to kind of set it up with David Permit who's still the producer uh
00:52:10thanks
00:52:10to Kevin Messick who was his development exec Kevin Messick's gone on to have an incredible career as a
00:52:15producer as well um and it you know they and in turn took it over to Paramount and Sherry Lansing
00:52:23bought
00:52:23it read it and and bought it and then it so then it became a search for a director and
00:52:29we had two guys
00:52:30ahead of us Rob Cohen uh was the first director and he left to make Dragonheart and then they had
00:52:36uh
00:52:37um Marco Brambilla who had been a tv commercial very successful commercial director and he had just made
00:52:43demolition man with Stallone which is actually the movie that killed face off at Warner Brothers
00:52:49because they were like we have a futuristic action movie we don't need another one I was at William
00:52:53Morris at the time and um my agent my agency represented John Woo and so they had read the script
00:53:05finally they got it once we well they got it of course when we sold it to Warner Brothers and
00:53:11then when
00:53:11we resold it to Paramount they really got it and this the revised script had gone to John Woo and
00:53:19apparently he really liked it and came on board and um of course John was uh John Travolta was working
00:53:27with John Woo on Broken Arrow I think for John it was the same kind of chemistry as he had
00:53:33with Chai
00:53:41and that embodies and I think he he felt that very strongly with John
00:54:00we don't know how Nick got the script but Nick Cage got the script and was desperate to be in
00:54:05it
00:54:05and had uh lobbied Paramount to be in it but he had made a movie for Paramount which had not
00:54:11done well
00:54:11and so they were not enthusiastic about Nick and they said that Nick could be in it if Johnny Depp
00:54:18said
00:54:18yes which we were like no Johnny Depp yes Nick you know um even from the beginning we thought Nick
00:54:26Cage
00:54:26was a great idea and we just couldn't convince anybody uh but when Travolta came on as the lead
00:54:32they were more conducive to Nick as what they saw as the second you know kind of the second lead
00:54:39and hilariously so Nick didn't get paid nearly as much as John Travolta but hilariously during uh prep
00:54:47he won his Oscar and Nick won his Oscar for leaving Las Vegas and suddenly they were like he his
00:54:53agent
00:54:54called it's like yeah I don't know if Nick's gonna do face-off after all and so they had to
00:54:58kind of I
00:54:59think uh up the you know start cutting the checks uh to make sure Nick remained remained happy um but
00:55:06Nick loved John Woo too you know John is an actor's director completely and um loves to collaborate with
00:55:14his actors loves to make his actors look good even when they're playing the bad guy and um you know
00:55:21they all knew that and so a lot of people really desperately wanted to work with John Woo
00:55:37we were on set essentially every day of a six-month shoot often writers are not even invited
00:55:44but John isn't John isn't that way he I don't know if I'm ever going to hear this from a
00:55:51director
00:55:52again but I certainly heard it from John when he you know told us we were expected to be on
00:55:58set every
00:55:58day and we were like oh thank you so much he goes don't thank me you're the you're a department
00:56:04head
00:56:05you are head of the writing department just like they expect you know the product you know hair
00:56:12makeup uh costumes all those people have to be there and so you know John expected us if the
00:56:20actors or or we had to shift gears for some reason and move locations due to weather or technological
00:56:29glitches we were there to handle it with him one sequence that that really gave my writing partner
00:56:35and I nervous breakdown because in the original script that was always a funeral but it was supposed
00:56:40to be outside like at an Arlington National Cemetery type thing and Nicolas Cage as the good guy
00:56:48was going to use the same sniper rifle that Sasha gave him that had killed his kid it was all
00:56:54supposed
00:56:54to like pay off to try to trank uh John Travolta um and they came to us like two weeks
00:57:01before like a
00:57:02week before they're supposed to start to shoot this and it was at the end of the movie and production
00:57:06and they said we can't do it outside it has to be you know we have to rewrite it we
00:57:10have to make it
00:57:10smaller and all this stuff so Mike and I freaked out and we went to John and we were like
00:57:16well what
00:57:16are we going to do and blah blah blah he went John will just was like he literally just looked
00:57:21at us
00:57:22and kind of smiled and went don't worry about it and we showed up at set and they had built
00:57:27this
00:57:27built this chapel he had the whole thing blocked out to shoot inside indoors much more intimately which
00:57:34was much better anyway but when we got there there were crates of pigeons there were crates of doves
00:57:39and uh he started we said hey John I saw where are these doves doing here and he said I
00:57:44have to put
00:57:45in my trademark and he did and so yeah that's a great it's a great moment everyone everyone is a
00:57:53John Woo fan claps when they see the slow motion doves
00:58:08for John he never stops trying to think how can I make this more exciting how can I make this
00:58:15bigger
00:58:15what can I do that I haven't done before or what did I have previously storyboarded but the last studio
00:58:21wouldn't let me do let me see if I can do it this time and so he would pull out
00:58:25something that you
00:58:26know he noodled on for a long time before but he never stops he never stops trying to make it
00:58:30better
00:58:31trying to make it more interesting um I think for him you know creating these montages that these
00:58:39action spectacles that's just sort of half the equation for him because he loves to pull in this like
00:58:48how do I make the sound score elevated and what can I do to focus on maybe this interesting religious
00:58:54symbol that will that will mean something about redemption you know and while the you know the
00:59:00cacophony of bullets are going off and things are being you know bullets are sprayed all around the
00:59:03room but we're focused on this like religious symbol and he's he creates this tapestry and for him
00:59:10that's what he's thinking in the back of his back and he does it while he's shooting he's editing while
00:59:14he's shooting but he's constantly thinking of like how can I create how can I elevate it's never just
00:59:20let me just shoot it shoot shoot shoot for action's sake you know it's not just you know like like
00:59:28violence
00:59:28for violence sake because it's not at all the guy's just a savant he's just a movie making savant and
00:59:34the
00:59:35only thing he he seemed to care about was being on set and just you just see him running that
00:59:43movie back
00:59:44and forth in his head constantly that's just kind of what he did and he was in a total sort
00:59:50of zone
00:59:51like a fugue state where he just you know he had his 18 camera setups and all this stuff and
00:59:58he knew
00:59:58exactly the movie he wanted to make it was very comfortable for him to make that tell that story and
01:00:04it fits in perfectly I think with his honks you know his giant fat Hong Kong films it's just really
01:00:10it
01:00:10sits in there nicely and it was such an honor and honestly and a privilege which is to work with
01:00:16him
01:00:25Face Off was the one where you sort of felt John Woo was really being allowed to do the crazy
01:00:30stuff
01:00:30that was part it was also a project that came to him and was tailored to his sensibilities
01:00:36and it allowed a kind of crazy uh it is a film that again you just have to go with
01:00:42it
01:00:42you just just have to accept its premise and then it's astonishing and after that he got Mission
01:00:51Impossible 2 um big franchise film uh it was almost there was a slight an interesting shift going on is
01:01:00previously if you were a breakout action movie director wanting what you wanted to get was a
01:01:05diehard sequel that's what yeah um Rennie Harlin had done you know but no suddenly it was a Mission
01:01:13Impossible was the franchise to to hop on board and actually Woo's Mission Impossible film isn't
01:01:20particularly liked by fans of the series it's thought to be sort of a misstep uh it actually does
01:01:27something similar to to Face Off is that it introduces its villain uh Doug Ray Scott uh wearing
01:01:34Tom Cruise's face um and then gets into the opposition between these two guys who are sort of
01:01:39the same person and they're both masters of disguise so they end up sort of imitating each other so it's
01:01:46kind of got John Woo themes in it but it's also got a lot of Mission Impossible stuff in it
01:01:50but it's got the
01:01:51weird motorcycle stunts and the little slow-mo moments and the backflips and it's got absurd stuff
01:01:56like Tandy Newton um uh infecting herself with the dangerous uh pandemic disease and you know being
01:02:04ready to commit suicide to end it all and and this weird and it's got fluttering doves too and and
01:02:10and
01:02:10and slow-mo dust and filters and so stuff so it it's kind of a a caricature of of what
01:02:18a John Woo
01:02:19Mission Impossible film might be but of course it was a huge success so uh it was only then it
01:02:26was
01:02:26Windtalkers and Paycheck were the the films that ended Woo's Hollywood streak he's kind of talked
01:02:33somewhat about being kind of frustrated by his experience in America because what I think Hollywood
01:02:40wanted was lots of cool action so I think the thing that was kind of harder for him to do
01:02:45was kind
01:02:45of maintain some of the sort of the thematics that were at the core of his films but we still
01:02:51have
01:02:51these kind of incredible sort of action pieces um which sort of become larger and larger and more
01:02:57sort of um uh excessive in scale in a like in a way you know because he has these sort
01:03:03of Hollywood
01:03:04budgets and you know he's kind of able to draw on all these kinds of effects so we sort of
01:03:09have you
01:03:10sort of speedboat chases which sort of become uh which make the sort of speedboat sequence in a in
01:03:16um the killer just kind of look really small or we have the sort of the the motorbike chase at
01:03:21the end
01:03:21with um Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible you know which is kind of absolutely sort of fantastical
01:03:37I think as a result of John John Woo's success in Hollywood and you know he was a known commodity
01:03:41and audiences over here know I think that's why his Red Cliff films actually were were quite widely
01:03:45released in the west as well his sort of return to China and Hong Kong filmmaking after his time in
01:03:51Hollywood I think wanting to return to a place in a space where people wouldn't be telling him what to
01:03:57do would not be restricting him from his vision and so um and he's one of the few filmmakers that
01:04:03could just kind of keep going back and forth really so the and that particular story which is you know
01:04:09based on one of the you know four canon of Chinese literature that story was something that's near and
01:04:14dear to his heart so he wanted to make that this big epic that story would not be easily told
01:04:19in
01:04:20Hollywood that uh I want to say today maybe today it could be in 2007 and 2006 when they were
01:04:26making the movie at that time in Hollywood I don't think that would have been well received it
01:04:31would have especially as a Chinese language project today you know that would be more like
01:04:35a Shogun I absolutely think you could do it but at that time you couldn't and he really wanted to
01:04:39make that story and it was it was a big epic movie um and he it was it was just
01:04:45it's one of those
01:04:46artistic things right he had to get it out it was in him and he had to get it out
01:04:49it was very well
01:04:50received and it did do well um it was it was a really exciting film and I know for an
01:04:55international
01:04:56version they kind of combined parts one and two and and show you know put that out for a western
01:05:02audience um again if we had done that today I think the movie would even be bigger for sure
01:05:18if you're looking at periods of John Woo's career the period we are in as we are recording this
01:05:26seems to be a um a second international period after the early 2000s I think after
01:05:34windtalkers and paycheck had not done as well as hoped um he returned to China and made red cliffs
01:05:43and the crossing and and big successful Chinese films which didn't quite have the international
01:05:49aspect um effect they they were seen but they weren't maybe embraced the way that the uh the 1990s
01:06:01films were um so who has gone international again he made uh silent night which is very canny of course
01:06:10it's a it's an international film but it has no dialogue so there are no subtitles uh so it in
01:06:16theory can play anywhere um and that's a hard bit and hard-boiled revenge story and then he he uh
01:06:23did
01:06:23something odd the remaking his own masterpiece as it were the remake of the killer has been uh in
01:06:30development for quite a number of years um I mean we in fact we started it over a decade ago
01:06:37a couple well over a decade ago and at the time John wasn't interested to direct it because he's
01:06:42already made that movie so why should he make it again he was just going to produce it and we
01:06:45had
01:06:45approached a Korean director and a Korean star we had gone that direction we had worked with some
01:06:49different sales companies we were approaching other actors uh we had done a lot of different
01:06:54iterations of how we wanted that project to come about and then our writer Josh Campbell and um he's writing
01:07:00partner met Stoick and had come to me and said you know I know we're not really finding footing the
01:07:05way we want to and this was before we'd seen anything like it I think there was only one example
01:07:11of this
01:07:12but having a female lead I know that sounds crazy today to say that but you know 15 years ago
01:07:17it really
01:07:18wasn't being done and uh we saw like one example and we're like yeah gee let's turn the chow yun
01:07:24fat
01:07:24character um into a woman and I pitched that to John and I'm like I know this is and he
01:07:32got so
01:07:32excited he's like okay now that is a reason for me to remake this movie so we started on that
01:07:37process
01:07:37a while ago a while back and it took some time to find our footing took some time to get
01:07:42to the
01:07:43Universal we'd cast the movie and then there was um our actress needed to do a different project for
01:07:49asked her permission to do another project first and then the timing just ended up all just sort of
01:07:54not working out and then during all of that is when Silent Night kind of showed up so we weren't
01:07:59we
01:07:59were sort of still kind of going back and forth um so Silent Night was this great opportunity for John
01:08:06to kind of get back into his Hollywood filmmaking um focus on what makes what means the most to him
01:08:16which is not going to be dialogue and uh focus on sort of that that tapestry of choreography and sound
01:08:24and symbolism and meaning that he likes to put into his scenes uh that's where he got to play and
01:08:31then
01:08:32we got to kind of after that pivot back to the killer so you know uh the killer originally uh
01:08:39is an
01:08:40homage to the samurai and the character jeff uh in the original movie is is based on the samurai character
01:08:48uh you know main character jeff so there is already this relationship so it's it's really a love letter
01:08:54to the samurai because that's what the original killer was so we kind of brought it all full circle
01:08:59by being setting it in paris uh making that sort of a character in the film had deep meaning to
01:09:05this remake
01:09:23so much of 1990s action cinema takes its cues from john woo in the way that 1980s action cinema had
01:09:35taken its
01:09:36cues from stallone and die hard and schwarzenegger and there's a certain element of that in john woo as
01:09:45as well but that style it you know you could argue that in the 90s was flagging you know we
01:09:51had a couple
01:09:52of sort of later sequels to rambo and rocky that hadn't done well and then schwarzenegger made the last
01:09:57action hero which more or less was and that ended that particular cycle of hollywood action and then
01:10:06john woo came in and and was instrumental in the next cycle even to the extent of picking up on
01:10:13who
01:10:13would be the next action stars and we haven't even got into talking about what quentin tarantino took from
01:10:19you know chinese films in in the 1980s in his own work but that's sort of almost you know beyond
01:10:27parody
01:10:27it's it's it's it's now a accepted wisdom um but quentin tarantino wasn't the only american or uh or
01:10:36british or international filmmaker to uh yeah get lots of bootleg videos of the better tomorrow films
01:10:43and to learn lessons from him i was working with universal at the time doing that race 2 and then
01:10:49that race 3 and we also did some original that in tombstone what was like a really cool western that
01:10:54we did and at at that time they were talking in universal they were talking about doing a hard
01:10:59target sequel and i was fighting for it to get the job because for me john who was always john
01:11:05who was
01:11:06always a idol i like the style of how he shot action how he moved the camera how everything was
01:11:12always in white shots and i didn't like how kind of hollywood was kind of when they do action
01:11:18everything is close-ups and tight and cut cut cut cut so i didn't like that so i think already
01:11:25in my
01:11:25early american movies like that race you already see me doing big white shots of fights seeing actors
01:11:32in full swing doing longer takes so i was already doing the hong kong style action so when i heard
01:11:40internally at university they were doing a hard target sequel i was like i need to do this i want
01:11:45to do this and so that's and they were like okay let's you do it i think what is unique
01:11:52about john he
01:11:53is that he did his own thing i think he also kind of had to reinvent it himself you know
01:11:59and um and that's
01:12:01what i did as well you know it's kind of you look as a filmmaker and try things out and
01:12:06for me doing
01:12:06those all those sequels and prequels i had like a freedom with budget and stories and a franchise
01:12:12to kind of try things out and and that's what you see in john's early work you know he was
01:12:18trying out
01:12:19a cinema that he likes you know that's also the reason why it's so unique i think he's an incredible
01:12:27artist and you know they just don't make nobody else makes john wu the way john wu makes john wu
01:12:33so um yeah he's very special fortunately i only heard a lot of good things about
01:12:42my movie you know from the audience you know i uh uh i guess the the people who love my
01:12:50movie
01:12:50uh who love to watch my movies they they wouldn't mind uh they had they uh they were too much
01:13:01of
01:13:01blood you know or something or violent you know they have never mentioned it you know and then they
01:13:09they know that i i i i did it for meanings i've never tried to use using any violent issue
01:13:18to please
01:13:19audience you know i i did it on purpose there there was some meaning there you know
01:13:57you
01:14:19You
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