Bullets and Brotherhood: The Films of John Woo

A season of John Woo movies at the BFI Southbank this July…

The BFI Southbank is offering the chance to catch up seeing some of John Woo’s finest work on the big screen with a special dedicated season this July. It will dig into the Golden Princess catalogue, only recently available again thanks to Shout! Studios, and distribution in local territories like Arrow Video and Imprint Films. Celebrating the kinetic style that influenced a generation of Hollywood action. There’ll also be a chance to catch some of the director’s later and crossover hits.

Both A Better Tomorrow and its sequel A Better Tomorrow II will screen, with the classic teaming of Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung and Ti Lung. The Killer and Hard Boiled will of course screen, as well as the film that Woo originally intended as a prequel to A Better Tomorrow, the Vietnam war melodrama Bullet in the Head, before he fell out with Tsui Hark. Chow and Cheung’s reunion on Once a Thief, with other regular Chow co-star Cherie Chung.

Hard Boiled

A Better Tomorrow

Bullet in the Head

Once A Thief

Red Cliff Part I

Red Cliff Part II

Hard Target – credit BFI National Archive

A Better Tomorrow II

Hard Boiled

The season spreads a little further with two of Woo’s Hollywood entries, Hard Target with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Face/Off, with fantastic OTT performances from John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, the later of which will screen from 35mm. There will also be a screening of a double bill of Red Cliff Part I andRed Cliff Part II (as opposed to the western single film edit).

Also this July, the BFI Southbank will play host to Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together and Jia Zhangke’s Platform, as well as the London Indian Film Festival.

For more information on the Bullets and Brotherhood: The Films of John Woo season see the BFI site.

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Andrew Heskins
Founder of easternKicks.com, which he's been running since 2002. And it's all thanks to Monkey, Water Margin and those damn fantastic 80s Hong Kong action movies! Andy works as a graphic designer in London... More »
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