BULLET IN THE HEAD (1990). I remember, when John Woo's movies first hit it big in America, this was sort of the Holy Grail to any self-respecting Woo fan. Unlike A Better Tomorrow, The Killer or Hard-Boiled, this movie was hard to find for quite awhile, yet it had the reputation of being Woo's best film. Finally, after plunking down the enormous sum of $40 I was blown away by it, it struck me as one of the single most intense and depressing films that I had seen. When I finally got to see it in a theater (in the longer "director's cut" no less, that has become another Holy Grail for any Woo fan) I was rather enraged that the audience laughed all the way through it (the audience laughed through A Better Tomorrow I and II, but I remember nobody really laughing that much during Hard-Boiled). At the time I thought the audience to be typical philistines, but looking at Woo's output now I can see the laughter, the man's films are ridiculous, it's unavoidable. The black and white characters, the idiotic melodramatic plots, the complete lack of psychological nuance or insight, and the thundering hammer-fisted direction can make his movies an exasperating experience. Yet, today, at least to me, Bullet in the Head still stand out. Despite the obvious "borrowing" from The Deer Hunter (among other movies) it most reminds me of Kurosawa's Ran, it is a movie from which all redemption and happiness has been removed, and it is still a grueling and intense movie, despite (or maybe even because of) its silliness and stiltedness.

Many films other than The Deer Hunter have had the "let's follow a group of friends and their experiences in the war" plot (like Paul Veerhoven's Soldier of Orange), and Woo uses three members of the Hong Kong underclass, street toughs (who look to be much too old to be teenage toughs) who get into rumbles and general mischief, and have no real plans in life. Ben (Tony Leung, in a genuinely star-making performance) is something of a pragmatist as well as a romantic, and is the only one (it seems) to have any relationships with girls, as he marries his sweetheart (Fennie Yuen), Frank (Jacky Cheung) is the wide-eyed kid of the group, doggedly loyal to his friends, and Paul (Waise Lee) is the most ambitious, obsessed with becoming a big-shot so as to forget his street sweeper father. After Ben's wedding, he and Frank kill a local hood in a street fight, and are forced to run off to Vietnam with Paul and two suitcases filled with contraband for Hanoi gangster Leong (Lam Chung). Unfortunately their goods are blown up in a terrorist bombing, and the three are nearly killed by Southern Vietnamese forces (who are shown to be as corrupt and stupid as the Northern Vietnamese are ruthless and sadistic). Undeterred the three head off to see and underling of Leong, a cool Eurasian hitman/CIA operative/all around handy guy Luke (Simon Yam, the real standout in the cast). Luke is, typically, a haunted Woo assassin, pining after former Cantonese singer Sally (Yolinda Yan), who is in the employ of Leong as a whore. Eventually the four team up against Leong, Ben and Luke for Sally, and Paul for the promise of money and power (Frank just goes along with his buddies). Of course, here comes the first implausibility (well, after Frank downs an entire bottle of scotch and chases it with a beer), since these previously innocent (so to speak) kids become remorseless killers, mowing down an entire legion of faceless goons, as Ben carries Sally off and Paul grabs a large box full of gold (and some CIA documents that will get them into trouble later on). They make their escape from Leong's nightclub, but Sally has been mortally wounded in the process, and, on the run from Leong's goons and the military, head for the river (Luke's convenient CIA contacts help them get through a checkpoint). Woo's penchant for the obvious comes in here, as the characters now start to have talisman-like possessions, Sally/Ben/Luke have Sally's passport, and Paul has his box of gold, which he thinks of above all else ("you can let me die, but let me keep my gold"). Here is one of the problems with the movie, while Paul was always a bit shifty and ambitious, he suddenly turns so cruel and violent and cold without batting an eye that it seems plainly bizarre, and Woo's total lack of the inner lives of his characters comes out, Paul from then on out is merely a stock villain, budging his eyes out and gleefully abandoning his buddies all for his box of gold. It is too pat, and poor Waise Lee must attempt to act out this horribly underwritten cipher of a character (amazingly, Woo criticized Lee's performance as being too much, exactly how a director can criticize an actor for not being able to fully flesh out an exceedingly poorly written character is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black, since Lee proved himself an excellent and understated actor in numerous films of the period, like The Big Heat). At any rate, Sally ends up dead, and the four end up on a slowly sinking boat, and end up being taken prisoner by the Viet Cong (with only Luke escaping). The three buddies are subjected to some awful psychological torture by the Viet Cong, who believe them to be connected with the CIA (since they find the CIA documents in Paul's box of gold), Frank is forced to shoot prisoners, and ends up losing it in the process, and Ben agrees to take his place, and guns down some more before they end up taking on their tormentors (Paul runs off with his gold) and Luke comes to the rescue with a team of Special Forces. Unfortunately in the big blowout that follows Luke ends up badly wounded, as does Frank, who ends up with Paul hiding from the Viet Cong, but his screams are attracting attention, and the now totally unhinged Paul shoots Frank in the head to shut him up. Everyone survives the battle, Paul leaves with his gold, Luke has lost an arm and is disfigured, Ben is taken in by Buddhist monks who nurse him, and Frank ends up a brain damaged, drug addicted semi-vegetable who pulls of hits for drug money. Ben looks up Luke, who leads him to Frank, and the inevitable revenge driven finale.

There's a lot of plot stuffed into two hours, that much is obvious, and much of it depends upon Woo's penchant for oversimplification. Yam's character of Luke is simply one of those convenient film characters that are so connected and so wise and capable that they help the heroes in any and all situations. When Yam comes running through the jungles to save the trio it incites laughter for the very reason that it is simply a deux ex machina, whenever the heroes are in trouble, Yam shows up to blast 200 bad guys. Another irritant is the fact that Woo ignores the Vietnamese completely, almost suggesting that somehow the whole Vietnam conflict was a Chinese issue, the Vietnamese, and the Americans as well, simply exist to be blown away by the heroes, Woo never for one moment stops portraying the Vietnamese as barbaric little savages who brutalize and torture everyone they can get their hands on. This is a fairly common Hong Kong attitude it seems, everyone outside the safe confides of the city is an unapologetic barbarian who lacks all refinement and civilization. This goes for Mainland Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Canadian, Russian, American, you name it. Worse, Woo clearly equates Paul's venal behavior as being an imported trait; he finds the American gold and begins to act like a horrible American, who cares nothing for his buddies, only money. He's less clear on his handling of Luke, who, after all, is a Eurasian, yet Woo glosses over Luke's mixed heritage so much that is ceases to exist, besides his speaking French and English in one or two scenes, again, Luke exists to propel the plot forward. Yet, despite the annoyances of Woo's provincial attitudes, the film charges ahead, Woo's plots, never particularly coherent (this one has two other screenwriters besides Woo) to begin with, are not his strong suit, and here the plot is just a broad series of archetypes, but I can't help thinking that if Woo attempted anything more serious than an exploration of the Vietnam conflict through the eyes of three movie land street toughs, he would be completely lost. Woo is, in essence, a filmmaker like Scorsese, he's a movie nerd without an enormous amount of hands-on life experience, and they both have a conception of reality that is so overwhelmingly supported by the movies that they are at their weakest when they move outside the realm of cinematic cliché. Nobody in Bullet in the Head does anything that's surprising, from Ben's eventually killing of Paul (in a ridiculous conclusion) to Ben's long suffering wife dutifully sticking around, waiting for his return. Every dour sort of character from Chang Cheh is here, right down to Tony Leung, whose excellent performance in none-the-less reminiscent of David Chaing's portrayals of slight, handsome, serious, and deadly young men. Leung's character is the only one that is even given an attempt to rise above cliché, he gradual transformation from sensitive young tough to cold vengeance seeking killer comes in stages. Frank, on the other hand, is reduced to murderer via a head injury, and Paul becomes the embodiment of Woo's horror of foreign evil with seemingly the flip of the switch. With the exception of Cheung (who is an actor to whom the concept of restraint is quite alien) the cast does an admirable job. One of the strengths of Woo's films are the excellent actors he is able to get, from Ti Lung's sad gangster from A Better Tomorrow to Chow Yun-Fat's doomed assassins, the leads are quite good. Yam especially gives the impression of effortless world-weariness, his almost undetectable signal to Leung to move out of the way before he blasts a corrupt miscreant is almost magical, and Yam has never been as charismatic as he is here, completely convincing even in his final scenes, understanding the limitations of his role and accepting them. Lee too, I think, is quite good, in a horribly written role that ranks as one of the most poorly conceived characters in any of Woo's films. Lee does his hardest to portray Paul as a pitiable figure, turned almost insanely wicked by his lust for money, and the pressures of his impoverished existence (the advice of all the "wise men" seems to be, "as soon as you have an opening, forget everything and go for it"), but the actor can only do so much, and Woo's complete inability to see anything in colors other than black or white makes Lee's job impossible. As in A Better Tomorrow, no shading whatsoever is given to Lee's betrayal minded character, he simply wants power, so he betrays. No matter how many people Woo's nominal hero's blast they remain above the fray, and indeed, above morality, all the harm these men do is hardly anything at all for Woo, who seems to feel that as long as one is attached to some sort of personal honor code, whatever excesses one commits are acceptable. Now, this may seem as an attack on Woo, and, in a way it is, especially since his films have been intellectualized to death over the years. Peel back the style and you get a perfectly empty universe, Woo's characters cause mayhem for their "code", but in the end their code only brings them death. Jeff from The Killer loses not only his life, but his girl, and, losing his eyes, cannot even help her, Ben loses his friends, presumably his wife and son, and indeed, his life, how can he return to normal after all this. Friendship is meaningless when it gets in the way of the march of history. So in that sense the "emptiness" of Woo is that for all the speeches he gives, he doesn't really believe that these codes, as such, mean much of anything in the world. I suppose that's the tragedy he attempts to portray, like the doomed fighters from innumerable Chang Cheh films, roped into killing friends and allies via obscure rituals and honor codes that they cannot undo. But, I think one should ignore the ugly undercurrents in Woo's work as much as possible. Woo is a completely kinetic filmmaker, he doesn't work with character, like Ringo Lam or Kirk Wong (or Stanley Kwan to name another), he hardly works at all with plot, like his frequent producer Tsui Hark, Woo works totally with movement and image. The slow-motion, the birds, the sparks, the gallons of spraying blood, these are designer atrocities, meted out like Dario Argento's ghoulish fashion shows. His characters are unforgivably cool, and exist to pose. Woo's American films have taken this to another level, as silly as Mission: Impossible 2 was, it showcased Woo's peculiar obsession with this grandiose attitude, characters don't need names, just titles: SPY, VILLIAN, FRIEND, LOVE INTEREST, DOOMED ROOKIE, etc. The only difference is that the hero might get a 20 minute death scene, whereas a faceless goon flails his limbs and dies instantly, what is so interesting about Woo is how little he really added to the action movie genre, how blatantly he placed Chang Cheh from Ming China to 1980s Hong Kong, how he replaced fist and sword with gun and grenade. In Chang, the hero can always take more blows, he can be slashed with a sword whereas a goon cannot, Woo's heroes fight endlessly and die when the emotional payoff is the greatest. Woo wants to be serious in a way Chang never wanted, when a movie was made in honor of Chang, and to raise money for him, he turned down the money and gave it to a film school. Woo, on the other hand, is a far more pretentious director than Chang, yet lacks that kind of purity, Woo has abandoned all scruples to join the ranks of yet another formerly interesting director turned faceless hack. Identifying the Woo of this terrible and thrilling movie with the Woo of stillborn works like Mission Impossible: 2, Broken Arrow and Windtalkers is impossible. He's become another robot movie machine. At least you can get mad at his old Hong Kong movies, and in the same moment be exhilarated by them. Now only a yawn stifles the indifference.