John Woo’s Hard Boiled opens with the best shoot-out ever

Hollywood’s action genre owes a massive debt to John Woo. The Face/Off and The Killer director had his breakthrough with 1986’s A Better Tomorrow, whose stylized gun-fu sensibilities subverted expectations associated with Hong Kong’s martial arts-saturated action scene back then. Stylized gunfights and operatic choreography soon became a part of Woo’s signature artistry, along with the effective use of slow-motion and multiple angles to convey a sense of urgency. In 1992, this specific genre of action filmmaking (termed “heroic bloodshed”) led to Woo’s critically-acclaimed Hard Boiled, featuring an iconic buddy-cop routine with a no-nonsense detective and a morally ambiguous undercover agent.

Officer Tequila Yuen (Chow Yun Fat) is our gun-toting, jazz-loving protagonist in Hard Boiled, and he makes a dramatic entrance with a clarinet in the film’s opening credits. This brief sequence opens with a close-up of a beverage being poured into a glass, where the rest is intercut with bold-lettered credits against a bright red backdrop. Tequila downs the drink in one go and begins playing smooth tunes on his clarinet, a content smile on his face. This laid-back jazz club setting sets up expectations for a mellow-toned actioner, with Tequila framed as an artistic soul.

As the music swells, Woo juxtaposes the neon-lit streets of Hong Kong with somber newspaper clippings of violent shoot-outs and police raids. This tonal shift helps set up the film’s actual dramatic entrance: Tequila and longtime partner Benny Mak (Bowie Lam) engaging in the most chaotic shoot-out inside a crowded teahouse. The police inspectors don’t go in expecting trouble, as they begin the operation by quietly surveilling a group of gun smugglers. Unfortunately, the arrival of a rival gang triggers lawless violence, leaving Tequila and Benny little choice but to directly participate in the carnage.

Hard Boiled showcases several intricate set-pieces with a dual gun-wielding Tequila swerving across the screen, but this opening shoot-out racks up a shockingly high body count. The peace is disrupted as soon as a goon knocks off a cage with a bird, and Tequila reacts viscerally by throwing a kettle of boiling water at his opponents. Breaking an empty bird cage, Tequila reveals his trusty automatic pistols from a concealed base, escalating the stakes tenfold. As Tequila and his men blast everything in their path (including furniture, ceramic plates, and glass partitions), the mayhem consumes innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

Image: Golden Princess Film Production

The gravity of such unchecked violence sets in once Tequila realizes he’s the last man standing, and that Benny lost his life during the operation. Instead of abiding by the law, Tequila takes justice into his own hands as he executes the gangster responsible for his partner’s death. It’s tempting to perceive Tequila as an impulsive man, but his instinct-driven actions actually adhere to an unshakable moral code. The teahouse shoot-out was inevitable even without police involvement, but Tequila’s presence helps enact a sense of justice, no matter how imperfect. Later on, Tequila begins a begrudging partnership with the undercover cop Alan (Tony Leung), and the duo dives headfirst into violent confrontations to prevent a bloodbath on an even larger scale.

Image: Golden Princess Film Production

Few filmmakers can open a “bullet ballet”-style genre entry on such a high note, but Woo sustains this adrenaline-fueled atmosphere with another shoot-out down the line, this time in a single take. When the bullets aren’t flying, our attention is pulled back to the calm, jazzy opening credits, where Tequila looks (and acts) like a completely different man. This thematic contrast between the two openers signifies the conflicting impulses in Officer Tequila, a man who would rather play his clarinet than leap into a kinetic gun fight.