Hong Kong Cinema Classics: Hard Boiled (1992) 4K Restoration
Director: John Woo Run Time: 128 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1992
Starring: Chow Yun-fat, Philip Chan, Phillip Kwok, Teresa Mo, Tony Leung Chiu-wai
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese with English subtitles
Screening as part of Hong Kong Cinema Classics, eleven rarely-screened, action-packed films from The Golden Princess Catalog. Only at Gateway Film Center in Columbus, Ohio this September 2025.
About the film:
Mobsters are smuggling guns into Hong Kong. The police orchestrate a raid at a teahouse where an ace detective loses his partner. Meanwhile, the two main gun smugglers are having a war over territory, and a young new gun is enlisted to wipe out informants and overcome barriers to growth. The detective, acting from inside sources, gets closer to the ring leaders and eventually must work with the inside man directly.
About the filmmaker:
John Woo is a seminal Hong Kong film director celebrated as a pioneer of the “heroic bloodshed” genre. He rose to international acclaim through stylized, operatic action films like A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992), renowned for their choreographed “bullet ballet,” dramatic emphasis on brotherhood, and frequent use of slow motion.
His transition to Hollywood in the early 1990s produced major studio releases such as Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), cementing his global influence on modern action cinema.
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