Bad Movie Night 11/8/06 - Hard Boiled

Every Wednesday we go out to eat and then argue over a terrible movie to watch. This week's dining experience was Great Wall, which is a delicious Chinese buffet. Inspired by the surrounding and the extra MSG'd food in our bellies the movie chosen was the John Woo flick "Hard Boiled," starring the great Chow Yun Fat.

I think our copy had a terrible translation. Every other subtitled sentence had at least one glaring grammatical error. Unfortunately that allowed us to have absolutely no idea what is going on. We just know that the plot was complicated with Mafia, moles, double crosses, dirty cops and lots and lots of gunfire.

Even though we barely had a clue to the plot, the movie was exceedingly entertaining with gun fights, innocent bystanders and cars exploding. The high point of this was when the bad guys and the cops put innocent hospital patients at risk with the various shootouts and grenades thrown in a hospital. Chow Yun Fat has a great scene as he has a baby in one hand and a gun in the other. He is simultaneously singing a lullaby to the smiling infant, while blowing away bad guys sneaking around corners.

"Hard Boiled" had lots of entertainment value with, but unfortunately the kick-ass scene were spaced to far apart. All the space between was full of talking, motivation, back story and confusing exposition. All of this put to a head by the "all your base are belong to us" translation. Even after the movie was over we honestly didn't know which characters were the good guys and who the bad.

Five B's

Boobs- Unfortunately none. There was a cute chick who helps saves the babies in the hospital and shoots some thugs, but sadly none of this was topless
Baddies- Well, there were plenty of Badasses in this movie, and the guy with a patch over his eye definitely qualified, but we just weren't really sure what he was doing, and why he was killing everyone. The main mob guy (keeping the hospital hostage) was extremely forgettable
Boom-the fight scene were awesome. And they just kept getting better and bigger. Of course add cars and motorcycles exploding, babies in peril, gunshots to the face and people coming out of battle covered in blood and flour, and you get some fucking awesome set pieces
Bad Acting-the acting was overall pretty good. The only thing we couldn't figure out is if the Hawaiian shirt wearing Baddie was gay or not.
Blood- Oh yes. Tons. In tea houses and hospitals; in houseboats and garages--there will be blood.

2 1/2 stars. This movie satisfied the cave man in me who wants to see carnage and senseless violence. Unfortunately all the scenes between all of this were a little too long.

Mark sez: What gets me is the box art advertises proudly that it's from the director of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2. Why not mention Face/Off instead of the inferior M:I-2? Travolta beats Cruise any day. Well, perhaps not the day BATTLEFIELD: EARTH came out... But that reminds me- Travolta and Cruise are both Scientologists. Does this indicate that The Woo could be getting his thetans audited himself?

Josh sez: In response to your comment I'll add some of my own commentary though I should warn that Meg is proud of her review and is likely to beat you to death with your own shame.

Randy Chan, who lost his eye due to standing right next to a freaking grenade as it goes off is the most bad ass character in the movie. Probably a bad guy, since he fights the main character named Tequila and the other mainish character named Vodka. Randy Chan is probably not his given name but since he looks like Jackie Chan's much more bad ass brother that's all we could figure to call him without taking the time to find out who in the credits he is supposed to be.

My favorite part about this movie is that certain things seemed to explode on contact. Occassionally that innocent looking car or stack of empty cardboard barrels would go up in a gout of destructive flames. This movie definately scores high on the Boom ratio.

The most dissapointing thing about this movie is the complete lack of sex appeal. There was a romantic interest of sorts but one could draw much more easily that Tequila was having a love affair with the chief of police after that little exhange on the roof top that is reflected upon at the end of the movie for apparently no reason.

There was that cute little asian librarian that in any just world would have decided to strip naked upon witnessing the murder of a Triad gangster and taken part in a lesbian hot tub scene. Instead it seems she filled the blood splattered book with a gun in it and forgot to mention this to police. Though, Tequila being a master of the Dewey Decimal system manages to find the blood soaked and gun filed book in quick nearly psychic fashion. His psychic book finding abilities are never addressed again.