Hard Boiled

Two years after Bullet in the Head, Tony Leung reunited with John Woo as a dapper, ice-cool hit man whose divided loyalties anticipated the stoic, enigmatic screen presence that would define him by the new millennium and, in particular, the conflicted soul he would immortalize in Infernal Affairs. When jazz-loving detective “Tequila” Yuen (Chow Yun-fat, already an icon from A Better Tomorrow and The Killer) tears through Hong Kong’s gun-smuggling underworld after his partner is killed, the impeccably dressed killer in his sights (Leung) inevitably proves to be another cop in disguise, giving Woo the perfect excuse to pair Chow’s swaggering cowboy with the subtly mesmerizing Leung. Swooping camera moves, slow-motion doves, and tequila glasses giving way to frantic close-ups of muzzle flashes and bodies hurled through the air, this is Woo at the height of his formal powers—an action landmark whose perversely poetic expressions of destruction set the stage for Woo’s run in Hollywood.