Give a guy a gun and he's Superman. Give him two and he's God!
— Superintendant Pang, on Tequila and his "attitude" with firearms
Hard Boiled is a critically-acclaimed action film by John Woo, starring Chow Yun-Fat in his slightly younger years. This 1992 action classic that has aged very gracefully, and boasts action very few modern contemporary films can match up to. Has a sequel in the form of a game called Stranglehold, also produced by John Woo.Hard Boiled is all about two cops - one undercover, another much maligned for always, always playing the Bad Cop (tm) - working together to bring down a gunrunning ring. There is plenty of plot in between which establishes the characters of Tequila (the Bad Cop) and Alan (the undercover cop, played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) nicely.But what you're here for are the action scenes, intricately choreographed and masterfully done by John Woo. What Shoot 'Em Up played for humor, Hard Boiled plays absolutely straight - and both movies end up totally awesome (for different reasons).
Actor Allusion: Philip Chan, who played Superintendant Pang, was a CID cop in the seventies and for a while was the head of one of the first undercover units of the Hong Kong Police.
Badass: Pretty much all the cops, but especially Tequila and Alan.
Badass And Baby: One of the movie's most iconic moments is Tequila protecting a baby while blasting up bad guys during the finale of the hospital shootout.
Badass Biker: the raid on the warehouse is spearheaded by a motorcycle light cavalry squad.
Black and Gray Morality: This film is your classic story of a cop who shoots first and asks questions later, and an undercover cop who kills people for the mob in order to maintain his cover, up against a ruthless gun smuggler and his gang.
Gory Discretion Shot: While at the hospital, Mad Dog uses a scalpel to kill an informant. Just as we're treated to a close up shot of the scalpel being pressed against the informant's neck, we cut to a shot of his blood spraying across the window.
Gratuitous English: Serves as an aid in decoding the cryptic messages left by Alan.
Also used by several characters throughout the film, such as singing English lyrics or shouting angry words. This is Truth in Television, as Hong Kong's primary languages are Cantonese and English.
Guns Akimbo: See the page quote, played straight with awesomeness.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Par for the course on a John Woo movie, but deserving of special mention for one scene. Tequila has placed several rounds of gunpowder into a metal pipe, with a bullet covering the entrance. He fires a shot from at least seven feet away, one handed, and hits the bullet, blowing the gunpowder in the pipe. This description in no way reflects how awesome and impossible that is.
He later uses this skill to finally take out Johnny Wong with a Moe Greene Special.
Allan shooting the lighter when he was supposed to kill the informant for Johnny Wong.
Made of Iron: Another John Woo staple. Mad Dog loses or has an eye severely injured, and at one point suffers Tequila repeatedly punching it, apparently with no adverse affects. In the final shootout the characters take damage which would render normal people paralytic, instantly dead, or at least incapable of serious action, yet they never stop.
Alan ends up getting a back full of buckshot after an assassin gets the drop on him with a shotgun. The worst this does for him is make him stumble twice, but he's soon running around shooting his attackers and keeping up with the uninjured Tequila. Though later in the scene it ends up catching up with him and he ends up in the hospital, but he's still upright and conscious. Not bad, considering that this sort of thing would normally kill a person in most action films, never mind real life.
Mexican Standoff: Between Tequila and Alan at the warehouse. Allan refusing to shoot Tequila is his first clue that Allan's an undercover cop
Which is ruined by Johnny and some of his men bursting in and shooting through the patients JUST SO HE CAN HIT ALAN, causing Mad Dog to open fire on Johnny, and dying a good man as he ran out of bullets to kill his soulless boss.
Noble Demon / Noble Top Enforcer: Johnny Wong's right hand man, Mad Dog, who wants to let the hostages at the hospital go and eventually turns on Johnny when he kills some crippled patients just to get at Allan.
Tequila carrying a baby during the climax is a reference to the famous story of the ancient Chinese general Zhao Yun saving the infant son of his lord Liu Bei during the Battle of Chang-Ban. Woo later got to tell the original story in Red Cliff.
Tony sends coded messages to the police by sending flowers to Teresa (Teresa Mo), a police secretary and Tequila's on-again, off-again girlfriend, with the message on the card. Before it's decoded, the message on the first card reads, "Are you somewhere feeling lonely/Or is someone loving you?", which is a lyric from Lionel Richie's "Hello".
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