Hard Boiled
The By popular demand screenings allow us to respond to special requests from you, our audience! Whether it's a film from a retrospective you want to see again, or a work you want to draw our attention to, we are open to all suggestions. The programming team collects suggestions from the public and responds to them whenever possible.
Mobsters are smuggling guns into Hong Kong. The police orchestrate a raid at a teahouse where an ace detective loses his partner. Meanwhile, the two main gun smugglers are having a war over territory, and a young new gun is enlisted to wipe out informants and overcome barriers to growth. The detective, acting from inside sources, gets closer to the ring leaders and eventually must work with the inside man directly.
John Woo
John Woo is a Hong Kong film director known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. The recipient of various accolades, he is regarded as a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema. He is known for his highly chaotic "bullet ballet" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema. He is known for his collaborations with actor Chow Yun-fat in five Hong Kong action films, including A Better Tomorrow (1986), which made Chow a box-office superstar in Asia, The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992). He has also directed martial arts films, and action comedies. Hard Target (1993), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, was his first American directorial debut, and the first major Hollywood film made by a Chinese director. His other Hollywood films include Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). His first Chinese-language feature since 1992, Red Cliff (2008-2009), broke the Chinese box office record previously held by Titanic in mainland China. Woo is the creator of the comic series Seven Brothers, and the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions.
