Bad Egg
By: Mr. Kritik

   So I'm not generally big on foreign films that aren't animated.  You see dubbed voices (or crazy accents) annoy me, and I'm far, far too lazy to read subtitles.  I recently watched a John Woo movie, Hard Boiled. To my surprise, this movie was exactly the same as all the othe foreign films I've seen.

    Yeah, I don't know if it being foreign was the only problem, I was surprised I Hated this movie.  The action scenes were ridiculously unreal and violen, and if you don't pay close attention the plot would lose you quick.  Not that the plot was the complicated, I'm not saying that, but it was like the plot was secondary to the movie.  So, even though I'm not sure I'm exactly clear on the plot, I'll try and give you the basic idea.

    In the beginning John Woo created a ridiculous action sequence.  The main character, whose name is Tequila (Chow Yun Fat), is a cop.  That's all that's important about his character.  Tequila and his partner go into, what I can only figure to be a Bird-Club, a place where people bring their birds to hang out with other people and their birds (Chinese people are silly aren't they) and when they see the bad guys, do they arrest thme?  Chase them to a place not filled with innocents? No, they just start blasting!!! An incredible fight scene follows, a scenein which no one ever runs out of ammo!  A fight scene where Tequila's partner is gunned down by some guy with an uzi but keeps moving!  He dies later in the scene, but my GOD it was an uzi!  In the end the good guys win though.

    Well that's about how the whole movie goes.  Tequila later meets this other cop, and they team up to take down this bad guy, I never really caught why he was a bad guy, but Tequila and this other cop keep fighting his minions.  At one point this other cop gets shot in the back with a shotgun and keeps moving like it's nothing!

    Oh yeah, you know how every action flick has that one seemingly ubeatable minion?  Well this movie had that too, except he was a big pussy.  He didn't want to kill any innocents or anything?  What the hell?  What kind of bad guy is that?  He even passes up a chance to kill one of the cops, but doesn't because there are innocents around.

    Now the rest of the bad guys I can respect them as bad guys.  The end scene takes place in a hospital, and when they're evacuating, one bad guy sticks his uzi out the window and just starts spraying innocents!  It was great!

    Anyway, in the end everything turns out ok, and the good guys win.  Too bad life isn't like that.  Full of fights where only bad guys die, and good guys win in the end.  Instead life's full of sitting around, waiting for the bad guys to win.  Not that it's easy anymore to tell the good guys from the bad guys. 

    There weren't any black people in this movie either.  That made it harder to watch.  But it is full of silly Chinese people, because it's a Chinese film, so I'm not gonna tie this into any American conspiracy.  What I am gonna do is point out how even the Chinese hate the niggers!  Would it have been so hard to find a black man who speaks Chinese and plug him into the already nearly non-existant plot?  He could have been the surly, American screw up sent over to help, hey he could have been with Interpol or something, you know how those silly Chinese people like their Intepol.  As it is, I'm not deducting any Elements for the lack of black people in this movie. 

    I'm going to give this movie a 2 3/4 Elements rating.  I like the idea of guns that never run out of ammo, and the senseless slaughter of innocent non-blacks.  Also the fact that this foriegn film's plot came second to the action sequences, meant I could disregard the dubbing, since I didn't have to listen to what any of the characters had to say.  Oh yeah, and I think Chinese people are cute and cuddly.

    In the end, I can't really recommend this movie.  If you like John Woo see Face Off, if you like Chow Yun Fat see Replacement Killers.  However, if you've seen both those, then this film is certainly and acceptable substitute. 

    Hey, what ya know, I didn't hate this movie quite as much as I thought.

                                      "Warn who, the entire South Pacific?"
                                                        -Billy Bob Thornton; Armageddon                                     

A Note From Mark:
            YES!!!!  This movie ruled!!!!  Guns and stuff!!!!   Sweet!!!!  This movie was about shootin' stuff, plain and simple.  The plot was certainly secondary to the gratuitious use of ammunition and pyrotechnics.  John Woo is a wonderful man.  I once heard he used over 9,000 rounds of ammo in one scene....COOOOL!!!!!!!