Bullet in the Head (1990)
[director John Woo]
Woo’s eye-stinging viciousness and tender-heartedness each reach their apex in this film, a simultaneous evocation of the Hong Kong of Woo’s youth in the 60s and the harsh war zone of Vietnam during the war with the United States. But it sometimes seems as if the two extremes are from completely separate films here. True, the story, about three childhood friends whose loyalty is tested to the limit when they go to Vietnam and try to profit off the war there, is one of Woo’s most evocative. But something about the film appears very amateur next to the craftsmanship of The Killer and Hard-Boiled. And while Woo plums the dark, hazy atmospheres of brothels and waterways (images common to Hong Kong) of Vietnam, he appears lost when he reaches the jungle and the VC encampments. This is a film that feels unfinished, with many connective pieces not entirely there. The most glaring problem is that we never really get a take on Vietnam. Woo presents the insanity of war and war profiteering very vividly, but never do we see any trace of the civilian Vietnamese people.
In addition, the heroes’ loss of innocence is never clearly illustrated; one minute they have innocence, the next minute they’re in Vietnam and they don’t anymore. Still, barring these incongruities, the sturm und drang is thick and wrenching, and the performances by the principles–Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Jacky Cheung, and Waise Lee as the three friends, an iconic Simon Yam as the killer who they respect and aid in his attempts to free a nightclub singer from the clutches of a gangster–are all marvelous. I even liked Jacky Cheung in this one. Can you believe it? If you like brutal emotionalism and bold, deliberate storytelling, you will probably be affected by this movie in a profound way.
In regards to the fabled director’s cut of this movie; the cut has never surfaced in completed form. It was to appear as a Criterion DVD, but that deal fell through (much to John Woo’s chagrin). To date, no one besides Woo and his cohorts have seen a full cut of the film, but some things are known from other cuts: there are several scenes completely missing from the film, a multitude of reaction shots that better bring home the emotional context of the story, and in Woo’s version of the film, there is no ending car chase between Tony Leung and Waise Lee. It’s probably a better movie without that ending scene, but dammit, I liked that car chase.
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