The power of belief, brotherhood and bullets thunders onto the 4K UHD release of John Woo’s most tragic film…
What does John Woo believe in? The opening sequence of his 1990 epic melodrama Bullet in the Head tells us so much about him. Joyously scored to a sax-blasting cover of The Monkees’ ‘I’m A Believer’, we meet his delinquent leads at the peak of their young lives; Tony Leung’s Ah Bee is strutting his stuff with his bride-to be at a church dance class; Jacky Cheung’s Fai Jai is brawling with street toughs and loving it; Waise Lee’s Little Wing is dreaming big after a command to do better than the lonely profession that defines his father. All Woo’s beliefs are in there: belief in the power of religion, family, violence, romance, and finally, (when all three characters are seen doing synchronised jump rope with local kids on a summer’s afternoon) brotherhood. It’s an energetic flurry of an introduction so effervescent that it could be easily mistaken for a comedic effort from the great Hong Kong action auteur. It ultimately is not – quite the opposite in fact – yet the power of belief in its zero-to-sixty-in-five-minutes opening titles is the key to unlocking Woo’s most uncompromising picture.
The muscular bonds between Ah Bee, Jai Fai and Little Wing are what make them get up and go into situations heads first and brains last, with Fai taking out a risky loan to pay for Ah Bee’s wedding, which in turn lands them in hot water with brutal gangsters, sending the trio on a smuggling quest to Vietnam at the most dangerous period of the war in 1967. The smell of opportunity outwhiffs the reek of smoke, cordite and Agent Orange, and what begins as an easy hand-off to a Saigon mob boss ends up in bloody carnage, à la the best Woo, albeit with a relentless and bleak edge that serves as a wake-up call for anyone caught enjoying his gun-fu bullet ballets a little too much. Somehow as equal a journey into the heart of darkness as Apocalypse Now before it, Woo’s portrait of friends under fire gains a momentum that steamrolls every character in its path, leaving the innocent in the dirt long before evil is vanquished.
Notably a troubled work in passing through the editing room (the marginally-less truncated Festival Cut is presented in Imprint’s new release), the 131-minute version left after 50-plus minutes of cuts keeps packing punches throughout. Although only taking place over three years, the weight of history crushing down on our anti-heroes is felt in non-stop powerful depictions of war, oppression and opportunism that only result in destruction. A massacre at Tiananmen Square-like sequence early on lays out the cards of what the team are trying to escape, but once the boys get to Vietnam, they see similar scenes of domestic terrorism and bootheel government forces weeding out the enemy. A petty robbery is overshadowed by a jewelry store mass murder; a dramatic escape from hordes of gangsters requires a passage through the hellscape of a village being razed by a shootout; later, a turncoat turns his semi-automatic rifle on a peaceful fishing community as a means of escape. Woo’s acknowledgement of the horror of war and political strife is one of the many ways that Bullet in the Head stands clear of his other works, maybe only being seconded by the expensive chaos of Windtalkers (a far more saccharine, sentimental work).
James Wong and Romeo Díaz’s stirring score lets the flames drift in hypnotic, operatic visions of oblivion, and a killer cinematographer team of Wilson Chan, Horace Wong, Ardy Lam and Somchai Kittikun blend the intimate and the epic, never losing a beat or a bullet in the mix, Woo’s signature slow-motion sees squibs aplenty tear apart capable opponents and unarmed prisoners alike. In bringing these images back to life, Imprint’s new restoration notably differs from others curated overseas by Arrow Video and Shout! Factory, opting for a cooler palette that makes the sweeter moments dreamier and the darker moments more haunting; one unbearable reunion between two characters split apart by terrible circumstance is bathed in expressionistic gloom that the other restorations make sharper. Depending on your preference for mood over clarity, there’s plenty to get lost in in Imprint’s version.
One thing a restoration cannot touch is the uniformly incredible performances from the star-studded cast. Tony Leung’s ride-or-die brother Ah Bee leads the pack with his trademark blend of icy cool and heroic vulnerability, and his transformation from cocksure wiseguy to tormented spirit of vengeance is held up by his immense versatility; the fact that this is so early on in his career confirms this as an all-time calling card performance. Jacky Cheung’s Jai Fai is tasked with something even harder, having to trace puppy dog likeability to disturbing hysteria and then beyond that into something otherworldly. And in a performance that Woo (unfairly) said was notably less effective than his co-stars, Waise Lee (coincidentally one of the stars returning for a great interview on this release) turns in some of his best work, capitalising on the sliminess of his A Better Tomorrow bad guy and getting to backfill it with a character whose desire to follow the money is complicated by genuine regret and red-haze delirium.
At the edges of the narrative is Simon Yam as mercurial hitman Ah Lok whose charisma is only outweighed by his skill with a stick of dynamite, smouldering into the film’s second act in yet another ‘I’m A Believer’ needle drop and effortlessly earning that iconic moment through the strength of his goatee alone. As ever with Woo, the female characters are slightly underserved by the dedication to pathologising his male leads, but Yolinda Yam’s tragic turn as trafficked popstar Sally Yan Sau Ching gives an extra element of heart to the film. She often only appears as a statuesque figure of abject sadness, yet her powerful poise nonetheless catches the eye, like a silent film actress who has somehow walked into a hyper-violent 90s action spectacle.
The overall experience of Bullet in the Head is unlike much else. Its epic scope and air of brooding machismo aligns it with something like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly; its specificity to the brutality of one of recent history’s worst conflicts stands it shoulder to shoulder with The Deer Hunter; one particularly evocative image in its finale even brings Hamlet to mind. Mixing those works up in a furiously-paced maximalist weepy-for-the-bros shouldn’t work, and yet, through Woo and his cast’s commitment to- no, belief in sincerity and pathos, it knocks any competition straight out. Rightfully emerging from the shadows as an underrated work in Woo’s canon and into the light as potentially his best film, Bullet in the Head’s stunning reappraisal by Imprint, Arrow and Shout! alike is something to be cherished, finally having its power reverb into the heads of a new generation of cinephile, like a stray shot being fired dangerously close to your eardrum.
Bullet in the Head is now available as a limited edition 4K UHD/ Blu-ray boxset from Imprint Films. Also available from Arrow Video as limited edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray versions.
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