The crime actioner focused on a hit man (Chow Yun-Fat) who accidentally injures the eyes of a young nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) in a restaurant shootout and decides to do one last hit to get the money for her surgery before she goes blind. Woo next made what many fans considered to be among his best films, "The Killer" (1989), a stylish meditation on honor among violent men. Sticking with the gangster film, he directed "Just Heroes" (1989), which focused on three adopted brothers engaged in a power struggle after their crime boss father is murdered. He followed up with an inevitable sequel, "A Better Tomorrow II" (1987), which at the time was panned by critics, but later grew into a cult classic held in the same regard as its predecessor. Woo's reverence for the poetic violence of his heroes Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Martin Scorsese was on full display, particularly in a bloody restaurant shootout scene that called to mind Peckinpah's finest work.After "A Better Tomorrow," which was credited with creating the modern Hong Kong gangster film, Woo found himself in the midst of a fertile period that would see his emergence on the world stage, while cementing himself as one of his country's greatest filmmakers. Added to the mix is the parolee's younger brother (Leslie Cheung), a fresh-faced police academy graduate gung ho on taking down a powerful crime boss (Waise Lee), who forces the convict to work for him. Starring Chow Yun-Fat as a destitute, semi-crippled gangster who tries to pull his old partner (Ti Lung), just released from prison, back into the criminal life. He went on to direct more insubstantial films - some of which he later considered to be cartoonish - before he finally set his sights on his passion project, "A Better Tomorrow" (1986), a low-budget, highly-stylized, ultra-violent action movie that came out of nowhere to shatter Hong Kong box office records and turn Woo into a top filmmaker. He did, however, direct "Last Hurrah for Chivalry" (1979), which served as a precursor to his later heroic bloodshed films, which boasted stylized action sequences that were underpinned by dramatic themes like honor, duty and redemption. The production studio went on to hire Woo for more films, including "The Hand of Death" (1976), which featured a young Jackie Chan in a movie that gave him his first major exposure.Over the next 10 years, Woo made almost a dozen more films for Golden Harvest many of which were comedies and therefore pigeonholed him in the genre. Woo went on to direct his own movies with the hyper-violent martial arts actioner "The Young Dragons" (1974), which was produced by Shaw Brothers' rival, Golden Harvest. He left Cathay to join forces with the Shaw Brothers, a busy production facility where Woo was the assistant director for master filmmaker, Zhang Che, who taught the young aspirant how to put emotion behind the action of his films. Two years later, he landed an entry-level job as a production assistant at Cathay Film Studio, where he quickly worked his way up to assistant director. Since there was no film school to speak of, he learned his craft by watching movies and making his own. Having grown up under the influence of François Truffaut, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, Woo was determined to bring a level of artistry to Hong Kong filmmaking, which at the time was sorely lacking in creative talent.When he was 19, Woo joined a theater company that was established by the periodical Chinese Student Weekly and began making short films with borrowed Super-8 and 16mm cameras. After losing his father to his long battle with tuberculosis, Woo set his sights on becoming a film director following a brief flirtation with entering seminary school and becoming a priest. He was lucky, however, to have the support of his church and an American family, who paid for his schooling fees throughout his academic career. As a result, Woo grew up poor, living in tiny shacks in the Shek Kip Mei slums. But his father was stricken with tuberculosis and unable to provide for the family, leaving Woo's mother to work construction and other manual labor jobs. Born in Canton, Guangdong, China, Woo was raised in Hong Kong when his father, a scholar and school teacher, decided that living under Communist rule was no longer tolerable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |