VividSimon Simply Perfect

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

paulclaassen Action all the way, but I lost interest halfway through due to sensless killing of innocent people. How many people can die in one film?? Good photography and visuals, but afterwards even this did not matter anymore. Also a lot of plot flaws.

Charles Herold (cherold) Hard Boiled seemed promising for a few minutes. After a little jazz there's an action scene involving birds that is kind of clever, although it's nothing special.Then there's about 15 minutes of incredibly tedious story with bland characters, and I thought, really, this is the best they can do?Then there's a big, endless shootout. It's violent but it's not actually all that entertaining; certainly not compared to something like The Raid. It's just lots of people getting shot.I've enjoyed other John Woo movies, like Face/Off and Paycheck, but this left me cold. After the second big shootout I'd had enough. Fun action scenes can pull you through a bad story and a good story can keep you interested if the action is lacking, but dull story plus dull action equals movie I can't be bothered with.

Mr-Fusion Here's the pull-quote on the DVD for "Hard Boiled": "Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God." That line is just about as encapsulating as it gets for this movie. What's funny about it is that it's a spoken line in the actual movie (by Yun-Fat's Lieutenant, scoffingly), but it's just so perfect for what happens in the story.It's the same as with "The Killer"; we've seen all of the balletic gun battles in Hollywood action movies since this came out, but it's still a thrill to see John Woo at work. The shootouts in "Hard Boiled" - imitated by many over the years - are something else. Chow Yun-Fat is like a manically violent superhero when he's holding a gun, whether it's blasting away while sliding down a banister, taking on a warehouse full of goons single-handedly, or . . . well let's just say how he rescues a baby from a burning hospital is nuts.Great stuff.7/10

gavin6942 A tough-as-nails cop (Chow Yun-fat) teams up with an undercover agent (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) to shut down a sinister mobster (Anthony Wong) and his crew.When you think about great action films, the decade you probably think about is the 1980s. For whatever reason, that decade made some of the finest action films (and horror films), which have not yet been matched. And the company responsible for them was often Cannon.Somehow, Hong Kong and Golden Princess did not get the memo. With John Woo at the helm, he makes what may be his best film. Apparently Asian audiences prefer "The Killer" and American audiences like "Hard Boiled". They are each good in their own way, but this one is above and beyond when it comes to the action department.