This is a re-edited essay I wrote as part of my UCL Film Studies Masters’.
The action film has always proven a key site in articulating contemporary understandings of masculinity for, as Mark Gallagher writes, ‘The contemporary action film…respond[s] to cultural crises about masculinity and male social roles’ (Gallagher,2006:45). John Woo’s unique status as an action auteur, who worked in both Hong Kong and Hollywood during the 1980s and 1990s, makes his film a valuable medium through which two compare two prevailing cinematic, and more importantly national, views of masculinity. They allow us to contrast the male identity in two key artistic hubs, and thus illuminate how political and social backgrounds can drastically influence what is considered male behaviour, and crucially how key social transitions and historical events can drastically influence this as well.
Through his Hong Kong work, we see how an external identity crisis with its imminent 1997 handover to China produced ‘a…radical image of masculinity which incorporates both physical prowess and emotional intimacy’; as seen in films including A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), Bullet in the Head (1990), and Hard Boiled (1992) (Enns,2000:137). In contrast, America was more concerned with a perceived internal crisis of masculinity wrought by changing capitalist and familial relations which were challenging male authority in the domestic world (Gallagher,2006:45). This can be seen in Hollywood’s action output which expressly avoided male intimacy and emotionally vulnerability, stressed the physical and muscular prowess of its stars above all else, and rarely allowed its heroes to depict any suffering on screen. These priorities are all abundantly obvious in the drastically different depiction of heroic masculinity which can be found in Woo’s American output of Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996)and Mission Impossible II (2000). These films, as a result, also highlight Woo’s assimilation into a Hollywood studio system and social ethos.
Yet one film, his now cult classic Face Off (1997), in Woo’s own words “became my…movie”, and expresses far more of his cinematic voice. As a result, it also expresses a different view of masculinity to his other films, as it serves as an evolution on his Hong Kong films which provided a unique response to the late 20th Century crisis of American manhood (Wu,1997:141).
Hong Kong and Homosocial Bonds
John Woo’s Hong Kong films contain, as Julian Stringer writes, a ‘fundamentally social [view] of…masculinity’ which depends on its heroes’ intimate and vulnerable relationships with other men (Stringer,1997:38). This is closely connected to the city’s ongoing identity-crisis and Woo’s desire to show its citizens ‘no matter what happens, people need to stick together…and keep the good about Hong Kong’ and is a common across his films (Fang,2002:66). However, it is best represented by A Better Tomorrow and The Killer.
A Better Tomorrow’s narrative is in fact centred on the re-establishment of homosocial bonds during a crisis. It follows gangsters Ho (Ti Lung) and Mark (Chow Yun-Fat), who lost their position in the triad after Ho was ambushed and sent to prison, as they reconnect and attempt to rebuild their lives. Furthermore, Ho is also attempting to reconcile with his police officer brother Kit (Leslie Cheung), who resents Ho for his criminal life and blames him for their father’s death by a rival gang member. The film’s final shootout coincides with the re-establishment of their bond, as Mark forces Kit to reconcile with his brother, further highlighting male intimacy’s importance to the film. The film also best highlights many techniques, notably the long gaze and physical touch, with which Woo establishes the intensity and tactility of male bonds. These are used at key moments including when Mark and Ho first see each other after Ho’s release from prison, which involves a long stare between the two men emphasised by intercut close-ups on their faces and a close-up shot on their intertwined hands as Ho helps Mark stand up. This also occurs later during an argument between them, when Mark fixes his hand around Ho’s head forcing them to meet each other’s gaze. During one early scene in the film, Mark also recounts a time that he was ordered to drink a bottle of whiskey and urine after offending a crime boss, and how Ho did it for him after he was too scared. This further establishes their mutual bond as important to both characters, and as a way of developing and demonstrating their masculinity. This is even articulated directly when Mark turns to a younger triad member, Shing, and tells him ‘Learning. That’s what you call Learning.’ This lesson in intimacy as masculinity is then reinforced by Shing’s later malevolence as he turns against Mark and Ho by taking over the triad to become the film’s antagonist.
The Killer also demonstrates the value placed on homosocial bonds through the reconciliation between two antagonistic characters, its titular hitman Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat) and the cop pursuing him Lee (Danny Lee). Their growing bond of respect provides the throughline for the film, and becomes the key way Jeff’s heroic nature is established. This begins when Lee describes Jeff to a sketch artist and says there is ‘something heroic in his manner’, and that he ‘doesn’t look like a killer’. Later Lee stares at sketches of Jeff and tells a colleague ‘this man is not a cold-blooded killer.’ It is through this burgeoning relationship that Jeff’s heroic status is articulated, and its intimacy is again constituted through Woo’s style as, even without Jeff’s presence, the film intercuts between Lee’s face and a sketch of Jeff establishing their gaze. This relationship between bond and identity is further established when Jeff tells Lee ‘the only person who really knows me turns out to be a cop [him]’, and during the film’s ending shootout when he says ‘You’re a helluva of a good friend’, The intimacy of this moment is also underscored by freeze frames on both men’s faces again staring into each other’s eyes. Thus, intimate male bonds clearly play an integral role in providing the foundations upon which Woo’s Hong Kong heroes’ masculinity can be constructed.
Hollywood and the Lone Hero.
However, in Hollywood, Woo was filming stereotypical ‘all-male worlds’ where ‘gradations of masculinity appear prominent’ Gallagher,2006:77). Thus many of his films established lone superior heroes, as can bee seen in Hard Target, or pitted male characters against each-other, like in Broken Arrow. Hard Target, Woo’s first American feature, starred Jean-Claude Van Damme as ex-mercenary Chance Boudreaux who is hired to investigate Natasha Binder’s (Yancy Butler) missing father. This ultimately pits him against billionaire and human hunter Emile Fouchon (Lance Henrikssen). However, Boudreaux is never truly threatened by Fouchon, nor needs any support in fighting him, and is instead celebrated even by his enemies as ‘an exceptional opponent’ who is ‘tearing [them] a new orifice’. Thus, the film establishes his heroism based on his superiority over, rather than his relationship with, other men. Even the film’s poster celebrates him in individualistc terms with the tagline ‘Don’t hunt what you can’t kill’. During his final fight with Fouchon, Boudreaux even drops a grenade down his trousers symbolically castrating him. The film therefore ends with Boudreaux asserting his virile dominance over his closest male adversary.
Woo’s follow up feature Broken Arrow continues this depiction of male conflict between its main characters, fighter co-pilots Riley Hale (Christian Slater) and Vic Deakins (John Travolta), over nuclear warheads which Deakins has stolen (Broken Arrow,1996). The film again establishes a scenario in which male-bonding is precluded and characters’ heroism emerges through their individual dominance over one-another like during the film’s opening boxing match between the pair. This match ends with Hale rejecting Deakin’s outstretched hand and therefore rejecting their bond. Therefore, it is clear Woo’s close male relationships were not welcome in Hollywood films which prioritised their heroes’ individuality and dominance so as to provide a vicarious ‘utopian space of action and individual freedom’ for many male audience members who felt restricted by their domestic realities (Gallagher,2006:49). Moreover, this reticence against male intimacy was compounded by a ‘homosexual anxiety’ which pervaded American cinema as shown by Bordeaux’s regular of uses homophobic slurs against his enemies, including telling them to ‘take your big stick and your boyfriend and find a bus to catch’ (Enns,2000:140). In this way Woo’s films began denigrating the very homosocial bonds his film’s had once set out to celebrate (Enns,2000:140).
However, in Face/Off Woo does centre its protagonist, CIA agent Sean Archer (John Travolta), around the theme of intimacy. This is because, despite being driven by his conflict with gangster Caster Troy (Nicholas Cage), who accidentally killed Archer’s son during a failed assassination attempt on Archer, his heroism is not established merely through defeating Troy. Archer captures Troy during the opening moments of the film but is not satisfied by this. As a result, he swaps faces with Troy to enter his criminal underworld and find the location of a hidden bomb. However, Troy escapes his captivity and with Archer’s face steals his place in Archer’s family. The resulting narrative then centres around Archer attempting to regain his identity, defend his family, and re-assume his role as husband and father. Therefore, Woo has removed his lead from the realm of male individuality and again established his male heroics upon a framework of, in this case familial, social connections. The film also stresses the importance of these bonds to Archer’s masculinity as we see how his obsession with vengeance against Troy has damaged his role as father to his daughter, who refers to him as Mr Invisible, and provoked a sexual breakdown with his wife which undermines his virility. Thus, through Face/Off Woo re-connects masculinity to intimate, albeit not male, bonds thereby evolving his filmmaking to offer his own response to the American male identity crisis.
The Emotion of Balletic Gunplay
The action of both sets of films was also affected by these fundamental differences as, while Woo was partly constrained by American censorship as seen with Hard Target which had to be repeatedly recut to reach the commercially viable NC-17 rating, his style was also reorganised to fit American masculinity (Ciecko,297:229). While all his films contain Woo’s signature ‘slow motion, overlapping, and shot repetition’, which calls ‘attention to the film’s presentational and exhibitionist features’ (An,2001:101). The features they highlight are widely different. In his Hong Kong films Woo’s action primarily uses gunplay to produce excessive and visceral violence, and provide points of emotional catharsis and revelation for his characters, thereby ‘visualiz[ing] [their] ability to feel something very intensely’ (Stringer,1997:33).
Hard Boiled perhaps best signifies this as the film follows policeman Tequila’s (Chow Yun Fat) vendetta against, and eventual alliance with, gang member Alan (Tony Leung) who is actually an undercover cop. However, this revelation alone doesn’t build a connection between the men and it is within the film’s ‘prolonged bout of bulletry’, which constitutes its third act, that the two bond (Logan,1996:128). During this hospital shootout the two men share their anxieties surrounding police work and life, all of which is punctuated by gunfire and visceral blood spurts. The excessive violence visually externalises their internal struggles, and acts as a cathartic release which helps facilitate the characters’ vulnerability with each other. In one tender moment Alan seemingly kills a cop prompting an emotional breakdown which requires a pep-talk from Tequila. This takes place in an elevator as Tequila calms him by saying ‘If you can’t conquer your own fear how can you conquer anyone else’. This intimate moment is sandwiched between intense action into and out of the elevator, and during the latter sequence Tequila even further confides that he once killed an undercover cop, a revelation which is immediately followed by a slow-motion shootout.
Sequences like this are found throughout Woo’s Hong Kong films; including A Better Tomorrow, when Mark kills the Triad member who set up Ho in a balletic spray of blood and bullets reflecting his grief, and The Killer, which uses action to consolidate Jeff and Lee’s relationship for as Jeff says the ‘one thing [they have] in common [is that they] both use [their] guns for a living’. The film’s final shootout displays their connection as they are filmed working in unison often through slow-motion, and with Woo’s distinctive use of slow camera-pans. This all highlights how it is through violence, and Woo’s formal techniques including slow-motion which underpin its emotionality, that characters in Woo’s Hong Kong films release their inner emotions which, as David Kehr says, ‘they wouldn’t be able to express in any other way’ (Woo.et.al,1994:82)
Muscles, Muscles, Muscles
In contrast, Woo’s Hollywood films utilise more physical action which is filmed to accentuate the muscularity of their stars, rather than display their emotional interiority, transforming them into ‘larger than life…pin ups’ who highlight that ‘physical strength and dexterity [are] the solution to social conflicts’ (Gallagher,2006:60). Hard Target and Mission Impossible II are the prime examples of this. This is clear from Hard Target’s first fight sequence, when Boudreaux defends Natasha from muggers, as a waist-level shot shows Boudreaux pulling back his coat revealing not a gun but his bulging thigh which launches into a series of theatrical kicks and flips. These establish Boudreaux as his own weapon, and Woo films them using slow-motion and shot-repetition to linger on and emphasise Van-Damme’s gymnastic feats. The film’s action-packed final sequence likewise centres around its star’s body as, even when using his gun, Boudreaux strips to a white vest which emphasises his muscles and continues to accentuate them through swings and leaps. When filming, Van-Damme, who of course became famous as ‘The Muscles from Brussels’, actually insisted that Woo always focus a camera on his muscles to capture their every movement (Stern,2023). During Boudreaux’s very final fight with Fouchon, he even puts down his gun to fight Fouchon directly, and thus display his physical superiority.
The second instalment in the Mission Impossible franchise similarly uses Woo’s talents to celebrate the physicality of its star Tom Cruise. Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt is even introduced during the intense physical feat of climbing up a sheer rock-face, which Cruise did for real, and which is captured and accentuated by Woo’s slow-motion, shot-repetition and camera pans. During Hunt’s final fight against antagonist Sean Ambrose, he also privileges physical combat by kicking away his gun, and later his knife, so that he can defeat Ambrose hand-to-hand. This fight is also filmed using slow-motion, camera pans, and multiple angles to spectacularise the action. Woo has in fact previously discussed the extensive series of cameras which were used to capture Cruise’s athletic body (Thompson,200:147). Therefore, there are clear differences in the way action was used in Woo’s Hong Kong and American films to support their vastly different masculine priorities. Moreover, even though Face/Off employs more of Woo’s gunplay than his other American films, its theatricality is toned down and not so explicitly linked to character interiority.
Can Heroes Cry and Die?
Woo’s approach to suffering also differs radically between his work in Hollywood, where a focus on superior physical capacity precludes any fallibility, and in Hong Kong, where it often propels narratives, displays its characters’ masculinity, and fosters male bonds (Enns,2000:140). Woo’s spectacularising of suffering can be seen throughout all his films in the white clothes his heroes often wear, which means when they are wounded their blood is emphasised, or in the disabilities they develop like Mark’s injured leg in A Better Tomorrow.
However, suffering is most effectively employed in Bullet in the Head which follows friends Ben (Tony Leung), Frank (Jacky Cheung) and Paul (Waise Lee) who flee to Vietnam and join forces with hitman Luke (Simon Yam). The film uses suffering to separate the film’s true heroes of Ben, Frank and Luke, from its ultimate antagonist Paul who becomes obsessed with gold and ends up shooting Frank in the head over it. The heroes all sustain injuries and suffer during the film ranging from disfigurations on Luke’s face, to the mental problems and heroin addiction which Ben develops after being shot. This separates the three men from Paul who doesn’t suffer during the film and becomes a successful businessman. This juxtaposition is enhanced by points in which Ben and Frank share in their suffering, but Paul does not, including early on when Frank is attacked and Ben coaxes by who out of him by smashing his own head against a wall. Later, when Frank is being forced by the Vietcong to kill other prisoners as torture, Ben again takes on his suffering by offering to take his place instead. This shared suffering is an integral part of their masculine and heroic identities, as it bonds them together and highlights their resolve and loyalty in the face of adversity.
However, as Woo says, he quickly learnt “American heroes can’t cry, and can’t die”), and we see the majority of his American heroes shrugging of their injuries or pain (Thompson,2000:142). Boudreuax, for instance, responds to Natasha’s suggestion he visit a doctor by derisively telling her ‘You hurt my feelings’ and ‘I hate doctors’. However, Face/Off again reconciles these differences, as the film begins with Archer sustaining a scar from the same bullet that Troy fired which killed his son. This scar serves as a reminder of his pain and propels both Archer and the narrative forward. When undergoing the face swapping procedure Archer even asks to keep the scar as ‘It’s important to me. It’s like a reminder’. Therefore, physical and emotional suffering becomes the driving force behind Archer and his heroic actus of masculinity. Yet, there is also an evolution in Woo’s masculinity as its construction upon domestic bonds also necessitates that Archer ultimately move beyond his suffering so that he can retake his role as a father. Archer’s wife tells him ‘The scar won’t move but will heal if you let it’, signalling his need not just to suffer but also move beyond this suffering to become a functioning man again. This is shown in the film’s conclusion when, before regaining his face, Archer says ‘This old Bullet wound. I won’t need it anymore’, showing the audience that he has matured and grown past his pain. In doing so, he is ready to re-assume the modern and domestic male role of father.
The depiction of heroic masculinity differs greatly between John Woo’s Hong Kong and Hollywood films, and they represent how Woo’s directorial style could be altered to suit the social climates in which his films were produced. In Hong Kong his films focused on themes of homosocial bonds, excessive yet emotionally cathartic action, and intense suffering. Woo used this to construct expressive and interconnected male figures in response to Hong Kong’s oncoming handover to China. In contrast, the American market wished to offer vicarious wish fulfilment for increasingly disassociated male audiences through privileged images of lone superior manhood, feats of almost superhuman prowess, and absolute infallibility. However, when given greater creative freedom, as with Face/Off, Woo shows his ability to reconcile these disparities and to evolve his style to respond to an American cultural framework rather than merely assimilating into the Hollywood studio system.
Filmography
A Better Tomorrow (1986) (Director) Woo, J. (Cinema City Enterprises, Film Workshop) Available at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hf8j9
Bullet in the Head (1990) (Director) Woo, J. (Golden Princess Film Production Limited, John Woo Film Production.) Available at https://archive.org/details/bullet.-in.-the.-head.-1990.1080p.-blu-ray.x-264.-aac-5.1-yts.-mx
Broken Arrow. (1996) (Director). Woo J. Twentieth Century Fox. Available at Disney+ (UK)
Face/Off. (1997) (Director). Woo J. Twentieth Century Fox. Available at Disney+ (UK)
Hard Boiled (1992) (Director) Woo, J. (Golden Princess Film Production Limited, Milestone Pictures, Pioneer LDC). Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf1vVsULTDY
Hard Target. (1993) (Director). Woo J. (Universal Pictures)
The Killer (1989) (Director) Woo, J. (Film Workshop, Golden Princess Film Production Limited, Long Shong Pictures).
Mission Impossible II. (2000) (Director). Woo J. (Paramount). Available at https://www.channel4.com/programmes/mission-impossible-ii
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