1998 ‘真心英雄’ Directed by Johnnie To
Jack and Martin are gunmen who work for two rival kingpins. Jack and Martin have been fighting on their bosses behalf for close to a year. When a truce is made both Jack and Martin are cut loose. The two men then decide to join forces and take on the gangsters who used them.
Chan sam ying hung, A Hero never Dies
Hong Kong
Singapore
Hong Kong
Singapore
Action! - Johnnie/Ringo's Hong Kong Actions: In The Mood For King To's Sweeping Realism
Extended stretches without dialogue and a constantly moving camera, even when it shouldn't, contribute to deepen the psychology of the characters and scenes, much like they often do in a Malick picture. This also adds to the film's surreal quality by making it seem if the events on screen are taking place in the characters' dreams or minds.
Much of what is known about the characters and settings comes from the dramatic action and the few conversations or ways in which they communicate their sentiments. Someone here commented how Johnnie To immediately immerses you in the action and these individuals with little explanation about them, and…
when a legless man in a wheelchair starts shooting two pistols at once in a neon lit nightclub with shattering glass everywhere, I transcended my material form. insane how good Johnnie To is at both action movies and romance ones, unfair that one man can do so much on top of being fucking hilarious. this movie brought some joy to my life that I needed today, all hail Hong Kong action
So that's why you guys are always on about Johnny To? Even though I'd never seen one of his movies before, I felt fairly confident going in that I knew what I was in for: heroic bloodshed, Triad gangster drama, honor among thieves, etc, etc. Then there's a long wordless scene in which two professional killers play a twisted game of H-O-R-S-E but with coins and delicate wine glasses instead of basketballs and hoops. From then on, it never stopped surprising me with absurd humor, shocking violence, stylized photography, and beautiful operatic flourishes.
The moment from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST when the camera cranes up over the train station to reveal the town just at the exact…
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Johnnie To's mannered style is supplanted here in favor of woozy colors and messy tragedy - an ode to brotherhood that is already on its way out the door. This offers a mix of heroic bloodshed and western tendencies, with melodrama that primarily expresses itself via the dynamic energy of the action.
fellas is it gay to only want to be killed by your eternal rival/best friend/deadliest foe??? asking for me, because i want that
combines the most purely expressive and maximalist elements of both heroic bloodshed films and spaghetti westerns into one. huge emotions require a huge range of lighting and color and pop ballads and bodily destruction. sublime.
Total incendiary mayhem, with a core of precious gold. I run the risk of teetering into hyperbole here but it's only right given this movie does the same. "Holy shit" cinema; the sublimation of the action movie into an all-consuming, hallucinogenic vapour, without weight or depth but also without any surface to carry you. For movies to go this hard, one would expect a necessary sacrifice of emotion perhaps, or at least a concession in the form of unavoidable bluntness. And yet for all this film's endless punches - viciously violent and no doubt tasteless to some - all of it is buoyed by a gonzo cocktail of abiding humour (levity, even) and passionate sincerity in equal measure. That's a lot of words for a film with more shooting than speaking but truthfully I am crumbling under the sheer force of this one. A torrent of bullets from the ethereal realm.
everything in this feels like it's made of neon cotton candy and jolly ranchers
seriously gives competition to ringo lam's full contact for being the most insane heroic bloodshed movie ever made
when a guy shows up in a wheelchair sporting a cowboy hat, sunglasses and two semi-autos, you'd better kiss your sweet ass goodbye.
Haha! Bonkers To is the best To. The melodramatic swell is relentless. Soaring soap operatic poetry punctuated with gun blasts. It goes all big all the time. Emotionally flexing to the point of absurdity, hilarity, purity. It’s in such gloriously poor taste and done with such overwhelming enthusiasm that it makes its own weather. 100% chance of explosive sloppy sentimentality mixed with mushy closeted masculinity. Warning: flash floods of soupy synth dressed glorified violence also predicted in your area.
Reserved, controlled, distant-eyed, measured craftsman To is good, don’t get me wrong. But here he’s just going for broke. Completely disarmingly ridiculous. The first Milkyway Image film directed by Johnnie To, setting up an impossible gold standard.
less a deconstruction of heroic bloodshed tropes than a sly repurposing. the quintessential hitmen doublecrossed by their bosses reconfigured as labor betrayed by capital. take away a gunslinger's purpose and all he has left is his moral code, and he's only truly dead if he can't exercise it, whether in revenge or as an act of loyalty.
The most Woo film I've ever seen To make. If you combined The Killer with Bullet in The Head along with To's insanely talented eye for lighting and blocking you would get A Hero Never Dies. If a film could match Woo's undying romanticism for brotherhood while also dousing the entire screen with gorgeous neon lens flares and WKW-like step printing, it's perfect in my eyes, and that's exactly what this film is; an unrelenting heroic bloodshed to last forever. Any more and all of you may call me crazy for overreacting, but my feelings towards this film couldn't be any more genuine; a hyperactive, psychedelic trance of a movie, using every pretty neon light and the poetic ballet dances…
The neon lights of the urban Hong Kong frontier do heroic battle with the savage shades of noir seeping from the criminal underworld in this neo-western melodrama; the anchor in this storm of blood, bullets, and betrayal is brotherhood, and it's forged in the unlikeliest of places. Two enemies, sworn to opposing factions, but the heartfelt animosity of their feud with each other transcends the constructed artifice of their allegiance to their clans, signing a stronger homosocial contract on the paradoxical fellowship of their hostility. The bosses don't even see their fealty; these men waste their loyalty on corrupt masters who desire nothing more than money. This misplaced devotion degrades and emasculates the men, but when they build themselves back…
