Justin's Rating: Don't they deduct points for shooting civilians nowadays?
Justin's Review: I began watching this John Woo man love-fest by hitting "play" on the DVD player, which was somewhat of a mistake. Seeing as how my Cantonese is a bit rusty and everyone was growling it pretty quickly, I felt lost within a minute or so. But hey, there was nice music. Sort of soothing jazz, the type that you might associate with "elevator awkwardness" or "root canals".

"This is also the type of movie where the general thought is, 'Why have one gun when I could be running around with two?'"

Then I figured out I could switch the audio selection to a language I was somewhat more familiar with, such as "English", and my job as a reviewer got easier. I even had the option (or "gumption") to turn on English subtitles as well, ensuring that my skills as a reader were well above an eighth-grade level.

Hard Boiled is the sort of movie that hurts tourism efforts in China and Hong Kong. Sure, they've got nice tea houses and hermaphroditic hookers on every street corner, but what's the point in going when you just know that at any second, everyone's gonna whip out guns and run around willy-nilly shooting up the place? If I wanted that, I could visit L.A., thank you very much.

This is also the type of movie where the general thought is, "Why have one gun when I could be running around with two?" Everyone's a deadly shot, even while sliding down the rails of a stairway, and nobody runs out of ammo, seeing as how they're watched over by the Guardian Angels of Prop Management.

Sure, there's a lot of largely unecessary talking and plot exposition between gunfights, but unless you're really starving for clarinet music and meaningful looks between two grown men, it's a good excuse to test your "next chapter" function on the DVD.

Hard Boiled has some sort of cop-out-for-revenge story, while protecting the lady and pretending that he doesn't get a little jolt of giddy pleasure when the blood sprays in beautiful slow motion. Our hero, Tequila Shooters, is played by Chew Your-Fat. He's a cockly little bugger who's not really happy unless he's playing Max Payne or Grand Theft Auto 3 and getting all the innocents in a four block radius slaughtered through police inadequacy. More bystanders are slaughtered in this flick than practically any other action movie ever made (I'm serious), and it's slightly entertaining watching them all but throw themselves in the path of the bullets.

The gun battles are stunning in the chaos of blazing pistols, shredded scenery and everyone jumping over and under everything, all very excited to be in a John Woo film. It's so manly that as a guy, I had to rip off my shirt in the middle of this film and growl for the rest of the day, chewing on uncooked red meat. When the pizza delivery guy came to the door, I did a jumping-roll, sliding over my kitchen table to throw my tip ($0.43) in slow motion, distracting the guy while I went for his kneecaps. After the e. coli poisoning, pneumonia and bruises passed, this whole movie-watching experience become a great tale to pass on to future generations.

The climax of the film, a massive drawn-out battle inside a hospital held hostage, is something akin to the authorities throwing wide open the doors to the Psychiatric Asylum of the Action Movie Directors. It's Die Hard with dozens of bad guys, hundreds of panicking civilians, a handful of babies (holding tiny, tiny pistols), and two cops out for some Saturday evening entertainment. You'll rarely find gunfights as intense or creative as what you'll find here, which makes this a must see for anyone with the rogue Y chromosome.