John Woo : The Man Who Made The West Take Notice Of Honk Kong Cinema
Ever since I watched the film 'The Killer' , actually the english dubbed version on a local television, I was totally lured by the style and narrative pace adopted by the director, which actually induced me to find out more about the man who wielded the megaphone for this Honk Kong masterpiece. And, inferred that it was none other than the Slo-Mo Master Of Style John Woo ! All his films have an extra-ordinary blending of human emotion entangled and inextricably embroiled in moral and social depravity punctuated with violence, with his protagonists split between honor and virtue.
"The killer is a man who does bad things, but he wants to be good." - John Woo
John Woo is one of a kind. The king of Hong Kong action cinema. From his films A Better Tommorow I and II, Hard Boiled, and The Killer, to his American films Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and his Face/Off, John Woo has redefined the way people look at gunbattles. Featuring two fisted gun blazing action, there is no other filmmaker who uses such a wide combination of zooms, pans, slow motion, and fast cuts to such a tremendous film. The best thing about John Woo is that his films have plots and points, something that most Hollywood films have forgotten. Woo cares about the plot and it shows in the tremendous characterization and development given to his characters. Working with some of the finest actors in the world, including the stunning Chow Yun-Fat, John Travolta, and Nicolas Cage, among others. (Van Damme is not in that bunch...) Woo has directed over 30 films, including comedy, drama, and action, as well as an American TV pilot version of one of his own films.
One of Woo's stated goals in The Killer was "to show that even the most different people can have traits in common. Even though we are walking a different path, we must have something in common. I made it a cop and a killer so that they would be extremely different characters, with one thing in common. That's why I wanted to make it a triangle love story, at first."
When John Woo was one of the youngest established directors in Hong Kong in the early 1980s he helped several other young turks get into the industry. One of them was Tsui Hark, who had made three impressive but uncommercial independent features: "The Butterfly Murders", "Don't Play with Fire", and "We Are Going to Eat You." Tsui owed his first studio contract, at Golden Harvest, to his friend John Woo.
No-ones who's seen his 1989 actioner The Killer could ever forget theevocative candle-lit church, filled with fluttering doves, in which thefilm's key showdown's take place, or the imaginative sequence in which tworivals at the home of a blind woman nearly kill each other while pretending,for their host's sake, to have a sedate cup of tea. Stylish flourishes thatare equal parts French New Wave and John Wayne epic made the director god toyoung filmmakers like Tarantino and Rodriguez, who have both put blazingguns in each hands of their actors in key scenes - a signature Woo touch.
Woo. Keep goin' man !
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