Bullet in the Head Review
Coming as it did in the midst of John Woo's peak period, following the Better Tomorow films and squarely between The Killer and Hard Boiled, and featuring an all star cast anchored by Tony Leung and Simon Yam, Woo's Bullet in the Head has nonetheless been surprisingly difficult to see in any sort of decent format. While it has receied a previous high grade release in the UK other international releases have been plagued with low grade transfers and incomplete feature sets so the word of any high end release that will help put the film into the hands of more fans is always welcome. Hence the excitement around the new digitally remastered, all region edition from Hong Kong's Fortune Star - the very first opportunity for those outside the UK to see the film with a crisp, clean transfer and the much talked about alternate ending intact.
In many ways Bullet in the Head is the quintessential John Woo film, a picture he not only directed but also wrote, edited and produced for his own company thus giving himself a level of direct control that he had never had before and would never have again. While the approach to gunplay is substantially diferent than in his better known films this nonetheless features all of the Woo hallmarks: friendship, doomed romance, loyalty misplaced and horrible tragedy. Vast in scope and intensely melodramatic Bullet in the Head embodies, depending on your perspective, both the best and the worst of Hong Kong film. The action is searing and kinetic, the acting first rate, the tragedy and melodrama layered on with strokes so thick that they'd make the most extreme American soap opera writers blush.
Set in 1960s Hong Kong the film revolves around a trio of childhood friends - the hopeless romantic Ben (Tony Leung), the success driven Paul (Waise Lee) and the intensely loyal Frank. Though very different in terms of personality the trio are united in their shared experience of growing up poor and have become a sort of surrogate family for one another, constantly watching each other's backs, closer than any brothers could be. It's a difficult time to live in Hong Kong, the economy in the tank and politcal unrest sweeping the state, but the trio carry each other through. Things turn sour, however, when Ben decides to get married. With Ben unable to pay for his wedding himself Frank borrows money from a local loan shark and is attacked by a local gang on his way to the reception to pay the bill. Refusing to give up the cash Frank is beaten severely, a fact he tries to hide but when Ben realizes what has happened he flies into a rage and beats Frank's attacker to death.
With Ben on the run from the law, Frank thrown out of his family home for continuing to get into fights and Paul chafing against the lack of opportunity in Hong Kong the trio band together and agree to leave Hong Kong for a brighter future elsewhere, agreeing to smuggle a shipment of penicillin and other goods into Vietnam where they will fetch a high price thanks to the ongoing war there. Tragedy strikes again, the goods are lost, and the trio are plunged into a world of violence and deception that will pit them against the corrupt military, gangsters, and the Vietcong with their only significant contacts in the country coming in the form of a Hong Kong singer being used as a sex slave in Saigon nightclubs and a Chinese-French hitman / CIA operative played by Simon Yam.
Bullet in the Head is without a doubt the largest of Woo's Hong Kong films and arguably the most epicly scaled film of his career thus far with the production hopping the globe, violence occuring on a grand scale and the film itself clocking in well beyond the hour and a half run time that was the defacto standard in Hong Kong at the time. While it draws on elements and themes that have marked Woo's career for decades Bullet also shows a concerted attempt to draw on larger themes and comment on bigger issues than is normal for Woo and while you certainly can't call the action sequences naturalistic - they are still very heavily stylized - he has made an obvious attempt to use the action to bolster his characters here rather than the other way around. Every major sequence is designed to tell you something about his characters and the world they inhabit. While Woo is not shy about yanking on the emotional strings and does so without restraint his incredibly talented cast gives the film a human heart, keeping it from tipping over the edge into raw sentimentality.
One significant flaw aside this new edition of the film is stellar. The remaster job is excellent, leaving the image clean and pristine and looking as good, if not better, than it would have when first projected. You have the option of watching the feature with a collection of deleted scenes and the alternate - shorter and more brutal - ending intact and reinserted back into the film or in its theatrical version. Sound options include the original Cantonese stereo mix, Cantonese DTS and a Mandarin 5.1 track. The second disc include a lengthy interview with star Waise Lee, the deleted scenes and alternate endings presented in a stand alone version for those who want to see them without having them put back into the full feature, trailers and promo items, and a pair of tongue-in-cheek weaponry infomercials. The entire package is English friendly, with all features including English subtitles and this, sadly, is where the one major weakness lies. The original translation of this film is less than stellar and, unfortunately, that is the translation used here. It is certainly an intelligible translation that you won't have any problems following but there is obvious room for improvement and, having gone to such lengths to create a quality, export friiendly release already, it is disappointing that Joy Sales haven't gone the final step and improved the English language options.
