Awesome / Hard Boiled

• The film starts with a teahouse gunfight that most others would end on. Special mention goes to Officer Tequila taking out two bad guys with his guns while sliding down a banister in what may be the iconic Guns Akimbo moment, and ends with Tequila spitting out a toothpick, shooting the last guy and blood splattering back in his face.
  • Midway through the film, Tequila does a one-man raid on a Triad warehouse shipping firearms that's just been taken over by Johnny Wong. He alone manages to drive off the entire force Wong used to take it over, killing many of them and wounding Mad Dog in the process.
  • The warehouse raid itself is essentially one long string of awesome moments for Mad Dog, who leaves no doubts as to just why he's the top dog in Johnny Wong's organisation.
  • The entire hospital sequence later in the film has its own Crowning Moments of Awesome as well, including Tequila's unique way of opening the door to Johnny's arsenal, involving gunpowder poured into a pipe and a dead-eye shot on a primer, Tequila and Alan going room to room and blasting up bad guys, Teresa and the Special Duties Unit officers getting the babies of the maternity ward to safety with the bad guys trying to stop them every step of the way, and Tequila saving the last baby in seriously awesome style as Johnny blows the place to hell.
  • Not to mention Mad Dog. As Johnny's Dragon, Mad Dog proves himself a serious badass early on, able to hold his own against both Tequila and Alan, all with only one eye. At one point, he fights the heroes with a single-shot Thompson/Center Contender pistol. But his true Moment of Awesome is the samurai-style staredown between him and Alan with a number of patients between them, followed by his Heel–Face Turn when he orders the patients to get out, and then when Johnny bursts in and starts killing the patients, blasts the Mini-Uzi right out of Johnny's hands and calls him on his rather psycho move, even though it ultimately gets him killed.
  • One of the coolest parts of the hospital sequence is a sequence done with one long tracking shot in a single take that lasts for two minutes and forty-two seconds. The scene sees Tequila and Alan mowing down dozens of mooks and one unfortunate cop through a series of hospital hallways, up an elevator and into several hospital laboratories. The choreography between actors, stuntmen, camera crew and special effects crew is a CMOA in and of itself, in what is already one of the most awesome action sequences in the film.
• Every single cop in the film gets at least one of these.
  • That bit when Johnny Wong's thugs start locking down the hospital and find Teresa trying to save the babies in the maternity ward. One of the thugs aims right at her head and starts yelling at her to join the rest of the hostages. What does Teresa do? She SLAPS the guy right in the face and tells him to shut up because he's scaring the babies.
    • Which is made all the better once the fighting between the thugs and SDU gets underway. Teresa is helping the SDU evacuate the maternity ward, when a couple of gangsters break into the ward and blow the cops away. There's one thug — the same guy that Teresa slapped earlier — and Teresa is the only one left standing. She grabs a gun to defend herself. The thug slaps her in the face to get her to drop the gun. She blows him away without blinking an eye. Don't ever mess with her when babies are involved.
    • The SDU deserve an additional mention, because no matter how much they get shot at (or just plain shot) they. Do. Their. Job. Particularly notable is the one SDU functionary who wraps a baby in his bulletproof vest and despite being riddled with bullets still manages to get the baby to safety. That's dedication.
  • Even Captain Pang, the Obstructive Bureaucrat gets a Moment of Awesome when he takes a level in Badass during the evacuation of the hospital. After putting up with crap from the Obstructive Bureaucrat Hospital Administrator about evacuating, Teresa simply turns on the fire alarm, obligating them to evacuate. Even then, the Hospital Administrator still tries to stop them. Pang grabs the guy by the shoulders, looks him right in the eye and growls, "If you obstruct me again, I'll castrate you!"

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