AllMovie

Superstar action director John Woo attempted to go himself one better in Hard-Boiled, his last Hong Kong film before he headed for Hollywood. In a spectacular opening sequence that's imitated in The Corruptor, among other films, tough cop Tequila (international action star Chow Yun-Fat, in smart-ass mode) destroys nearly every piece of crockery in a teahouse when a police raid goes wrong. The balletic elegance of the incredible carnage in this scene is a Woo hallmark; the obligatory shot of Chow sliding across the floor, two guns blazing like he's dropped into a spaghetti Western, is cinematic poetry. While the ensuing plot is vintage Woo -- Tequila discovers that the assassin he's gunning for is actually an undercover cop, played with grim determination by Tony Leung -- the chemistry between the two actors as their characters develop an uneasy alliance makes the whole thing believable, even when it's discovered that the bad guys have chosen to hide their smuggled arsenal in a hospital basement, and the ensuing shootout probably cost more bullets than Terminator 2.