This is a re-edited essay I wrote as part of my UCL Film Studies Masters’.
The action film for decades provided a crucible in which modern-day masculinity has been forged and tested. Hong Kong and Hollywood have long been at the forefront of this, producing history’s most famed fighting-heroes from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jackie Chan and Bruce Willis to Donnie Yen. However, what exactly makes an action hero has long differed between the two regions, revealing how socio-political foundations drastically influence what is idealised as male behaviour.
This is nowhere clearer than with the action-auteur John Woo whose work across both Hong Kong and Hollywood offers a fascinating glimpse into two very different cinematic and more importantly national, views of masculinity. His Hong Kong filmography containing films like A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), Bullet in the Head (1990), and Hard Boiled (1992) took place against the backdrop of the city’s imminent 1997 handover to China. As a result, its heroes prioritised cooperation, expressed emotional intimacy, and were willing to acknowledge their weaknesses in service of a greater goal.
In contrast, his American works of the 1990s were produced in a climate concerned with a perceived internal threat – namely how shifting capitalist and familial relations were challenging male authority in the domestic sphere. Hollywood’s panacea to this supposed crisis of masculinity were films which venerated physical and muscular prowess above all else, rarely allowed suffering to be seen on screen, and avoided getting its stars entangled in “feminine” behaviour like feelings. John Woo’s assimilation into such filmmaking can clearly be seen across films like Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996)and Mission Impossible II (2000).
Yet one of Woo’s films was able to bridge the gap between both cultures, serving as both an evolution of his Hong Kong stylings and providing a unique response to the late 20th Century crisis of manhood. This film in Woo’s words was the only American venture which “became…my movie”. The glorious 90s bonkers-fest that has now become a cult classic, Face Off (1997).
Hong Kong and Homosocial Bonds
Intimacy and vulnerability sit at the core of John Woo’s Hong Kong-based films as shown in A Better Tomorrow and The Killer whose heroes are social creatures in need of each other’s support. Woo did this to promote cooperation in the face of his city’s ongoing identity-crisis and in his words show citizens that ‘no matter what happens, people need to stick together…and keep the good about Hong Kong’.
A Better Tomorrow’s narrative centres on the re-establishment of a bond between gangsters Ho (Ti Lung) and Mark (Chow Yun-Fat), who attempt to rebuild their position in the triad after Ho was ambushed and sent to prison. At the same time, Ho is attempting to reconcile with his police officer brother Kit (Leslie Cheung), who resents Ho’s criminal life and blames him for their father’s death at a rival gang member’s hands. Throughout the film Woo uses physical touch and long gazes to establish the intensity and tactility of the film’s male bonds, and fills crucial moments with closeups of intertwined hands or eyes locked together. The audience is even given a lesson in male bonding when Mark tearfully recounts a time he was ordered to drink a whiskey bottle full of urine to appease a crime boss, and Ho offered to take the proverbial bullet for him. This message is also intertwined through the action set pieces which provide the narrative junctures in which relationships are rebuilt. The film’s final shootout provides the setting where an emotive Mark forces Kit to reconcile with Ho.
The Killer follows a game of cat and mouse between its titular hitman Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat)and the cop pursuing him, Lee (Danny Lee). However, this quickly develops into a bond of mutual respect and affection again driving the narrative through homosocial connection. Indeed, it is through Lee’s longing for Jeff that his heroic nature is articulated as, while staring deeply at his sketch portrait, Lee tells a fellow Cop that Jeff ‘doesn’t look like a killer’ and that there is ‘something heroic in his manner’. The film’s finale cements their friendship using another of Woo’s recurring motifs, the freeze frame. The men team up during a shoot-out against gangsters and corrupt policemen, and before one final chase, Jeff tells Lee ‘You’re a helluva of a good friend’, a moment which Woo chooses to quite literally freeze in time.
Hollywood and the Lone Hero.
In comparison, the Hollywood of the 1990s was a world where masculinity was graded and action stars who either stood above everyone else or proved their worth by outdoing a peer. They were pumping out, as the author Mark Gallagher writes, a ‘utopian space of action and individual freedom’ providing wish fulfilment for male audiences who felt restricted by their domestic realities.
This is clear in Hard Target, Woo’s first foray in America, which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme as ex-mercenary Chance Boudreaux who investigates a client’s missing father which pits him against billionaire and human hunter Emile Fouchon (Lance Henrikssen). At no point is Boudreaux challenged by or reliant on any other men in the film and is constantly described as ‘an exceptional opponent’ without equal. The film’s poster featured a bicep- popping Van Damme with the tagline “Don’t hunt what you can’t kill”. The man-on-man connection nurtured in Hong Kong and being a man now meant dominating those around you. In a very Freudian move, Boudreaux defeats Fouchon by dropping a grenade down his pants, both literally and symbolically castrating him.
His follow-up Broken Arrow saw fighter pilots Riley Hale (Christian Slater) and Vic Deakins (John Travolta) turn against each other after Deakins betrays the air force and steals its nuclear warheads. This scenario again precludes male-bonding and means characters’ heroism emerges through their dominance over one another. Broken Arrow’s opening credits even play over a boxing match, the most virile of male sports, between both men in which Hale quite literally rejects Deakins outstretched hand of support.
However, in Face/Off Woo successfully re-connected masculinity to the intimate, albeit not male intimacy, finding a way to integrate his priorities into the studio system. The film sees CIA agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) face-off against gangster Castor Troy (played with classic mania by Nicolas Cage) whom he captures in the film’s opening moments. However, unlike Hard Target or Broken Arrow, simply defeating his rival is not enough to make Archer a hero. He is still reeling from the death of his son, killed in a botched assassination attempt by Troy, and so attempts to infiltrate and destroy Troy’s criminal network by swapping faces. While attempting this, Troy escapes and armed with Archer’s identity steals his position in Archer’s family. Archer’s status as hero is therefore developed not by defeating Troy but by fighting for his family and re-assuming his role as husband and father. This marked a fairly big departure from most American action films (save possibly Die Hard) and made returning to, rather than breaking free from, the domestic sphere the hero’s main focus. Throughout the film Archer even becomes more sensitive as he realises how his emotional absence is responsible for his strained relationship with his daughter and sexual breakdown with his wife.
The Emotion of Balletic Gunplay
Woo’s thematic priorities also materialised in his action, which in his Hong Kong made films focused on gunplay and utilised its excessive, visceral violence as a point of catharsis and to underpin emotional revelations. Hard Boiled epitomises this as it traces the police officer Tequila’s (Chow Yun Fat) vendetta against, and eventual alliance with, gang member and undercover cop Alan (Tony Leung). Like many of Woo’s films, the men reconcile and join forces in this instance during a ‘prolonged bout of bulletry’ in a hospital which constitutes Hard Boiled’s third act. During this hospital shootout the two men share their anxieties surrounding police work and life, all of which is punctuated by gunfire and outlandish spurts of blood. 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 and breaks down emotionally. This requires a pep-talk talk from Tequila which takes place in an elevator scene sandwiched between intense moments of action.
Such sequences are found throughout Woo’s Hong Kong oeuvre. In A Better Tomorrow, Mark kills the Triad member who set up Ho in a balletic spray of blood and bullets which reflects his grief. Meanwhile, The Killer 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 glorious theatrics of its final shoot out then pushes this home further as the two work together in a succession of slow motion and camera pans. Throughout Woo’s Hong Kong films, violence is used as a means of articulating feelings and thoughts that characters would otherwise be unable to express.
Muscles, Muscles, Muscles
In contrast, Woo’s Hollywood films utilise more physical combat which highlights muscles or emotions and continues the long-standing tradition of presenting strength as the solution to conflict. Hard Target’s first fight sequence sees Boudreaux fight off muggers by pulling back his coat in the tradition of westerns revealing not a gun but his bulging thigh. He subsequently launches into a series of theatrical kicks and flips which establish Boudreaux as his own weapon. It’s action-packed finale then sees ‘The Muscles from Brussels’ strip down to a white vest and leap about like Tarzan. Van Damme actually insisted that a camera be focused on his muscle at all times and in classic fashion Bodreuax drops his gun to fight Fouch in hand-to-hand combat.
The second instalment in Tom Cruise’s tent-pole stuntacular Mission Impossible series also appropriated Woo’s directorial techniques to celebrate the physicality of its star. The film begins with Ethan Hunt in a point of intense physical exertion as he climbs an Australian rock-face and is accentuated by Woo’s slow-motion, shot-repetition and camera pans. Likewise in the final fight against villain Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) Hunt kicks away his gun and launches into hand-to-hand combat which was filmed using six different cameras to collect every sinewy movement.
Can Heroes Cry and Die?
Suffering also proved a major difference in Woo’s filmography as while working in Hong Kong he spectacularised suffering to proper narratives forwards and build connections between his heroes. He regularly clothed his heroes in white to show their wounds and blood and had them accrue permanent injuries 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, 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, including Luke’s facial disfigurations and Ben’s mental health and drug problems. This separates them from Paul, who never suffers and instead becomes a successful businessman. This juxtaposition is enhanced by points in which Ben and Frank share in their suffering, but Paul does not. This includes when Frank is captured by the Vietcong and forced to kill fellow prisoners as a form of torture. In scenes echoing Mark and Ho in A Better Tomorrow, Ben offers to take his place instead. This shared suffering is an integral part of their masculine connection and therefore their heroic identities.
In Hollywood, Woo quickly learnt “American heroes can’t cry, and can’t die” as any fallibility would break the mythos of their superiority. This is seen across Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and Mission Impossible II where characters are barely scratched by the insane danger they find themselves in. Boudreaux even shrugs off suggestions he go to a doctor by saying such a suggestion “hurts my feelings”. However, Woo successfully injected suffering as a major plot point in Face/Off through a scar which Archer sustains from the same bullet that 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. Physical and emotional suffering once again become the defining force behind Archer’s heroic acts.
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.
Conclusion
John Woo’s Hong Kong and Hollywood films contain vastly different masculine ideals and serve as fascinating entry points into how underlying social-economic structures and political challenges are wrapped up in what it is considered the pinnacle of manhood. His work also shows the ease with which Hollywood studios could subsume voices into their cultural world view. 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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