Hard-Boiled is actually Woo's most relaxed and confident film so far, and in many ways a terrific achievement. It offers nothing much new in plot terms... but its details and incidentals are gleefully idiosyncratic.

| Jul 27, 2023

Woo has elevated the action movie into the realm of art. Infinitely more exciting than a dozen Die Hards, action cinema doesn't come any better than this.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 27, 2023

Woo sets a pace for himself from the outset that he can't maintain. But his action sequences are so artfully handled and his sense of humor is so outrageous that it's difficult not to be tickled, and thrilled.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2023

Hard-Boiled is, above all, cinema for cinema's sake. Film buffs will be able to rattle off a list of influences on Woo here and cheer at Woo's unapologetic extravagances.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2023

Director John Woo's fifth collaboration with Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat is so deliriously action-packed that it verges on, and sometimes succumbs to, self-parody.

| Jul 27, 2023

Woo manages to imbue all this mass destruction with an air that is almost whimsical.

| Jul 27, 2023

Mr. Woo does, in fact, seem to be a very brisk, talented director with a gift for the flashy effect and the bizarre confrontation.

| Jul 27, 2023

It's astoundingly emotional and exhilarating, thanks to the oversized passions Woo grants his characters and the formal brilliance of his filming, with his rushing camera, extreme long takes and magnificent choreography of movement.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2023

This is ultra-violence so complex and stylized it plays like a ballet that's so dazzlingly choreographed it has you rubbing your eyes in disbelief.

| Jul 27, 2023

Woo's operatic tale of warring mobsters and the implacable cop caught between them can be enormous fun. But if you start to think what all this mega-violence is really about, Woo's brand of high-body-count cinema can be spiritually draining.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 27, 2023

The lush, powerful stylization is far from a mere exercise: It serves Woo's bittersweet mediation on identity and fractured loyalties.

| Jul 27, 2023

It's not for all tastes, but Hard-Boiled provides a rare opportunity for action fans to see the work one of the genre's contemporary masters.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2023

Movies like this need a big screen. They're a kick in the head.

| Jul 27, 2023

Beneath all the murder and mayhem, there's actually a reasonable story trying to get out, told with not a little wit.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 27, 2023

Soon, very soon, one realizes that all the film consists of is essentially the same demonstration of balletic bodycount, repeatedly graphic but deadeningly monotonous.

| Jul 27, 2023

That Hard-Boiled is the most audacious of all Woo's Hong Kong films cannot be argued... But Hard-Boiled's hackneyed plot does not fill up the time between the action sequences nearly as well as the ones concocted for The Killer [and others].

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 27, 2023

Though the director insists his films have a moral, it is not easy to escape the suspicion that these films are made for the sort of pimply idiots who do not, in fact, give a damn how the shootouts are joined together.

| Jul 27, 2023

Woo's films are like pornography in that plot is a peripheral effect added in order to supply occasions for the real purpose of the film, in Woo's case genocide. He has a glorious future ahead of him.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 27, 2023

Woo's treatment of these action sequences is masterful, combining quick-cut editing with fluid tracking shots. But all that style would be useless without Chow Yun-Fat's soulful performance to humanize it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2023

Woo may be the most fascinating creator of action films since Sam Peckinpah. Though his touch is not always sure, his vision is bold and his way with action is confidence and exuberant.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 27, 2023