The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“An explosively visceral, operatic tour de force … Action cinema doesn’t come any better than this.”

Mark Salisbury, Empire Magazine

The art of the action sequence arguably reached its zenith in John Woo’s unapologetically in-your-face heroic bloodshed epic, an exclamation point on the balletic gunplay genre he helped define and deliver to the mainstream. A tough-guy bromance flanked by extreme violence and everything-explodes logic, Hard Boiled sets down amid a brutal Hong Kong crime wave where Triad arms dealers and HK police are engaged in a tug of war for control of the city. When supercop ​“Tequila” Yuen (Chow Yun-fat) loses his partner in a firefight, his warpath to vengeance brings him barrel-to-barrel with Alan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a gangster whose loyalties are not above suspicion. Woo, in service to action spectacle above all else, choreographs shoot-outs, spring-loaded bodies, combustible vehicles, and truly incredible stunts and pyrotechnics with an adrenaline-crazed genius unmatched in the Hollywood career that followed. This glistening new restoration debuted at Cannes Classic 2025.

In Cantonese with English subtitles

“Woo’s most relaxed and confident film so far, and in many ways a terrific achievement … Its details and incidentals are gleefully idiosyncratic and the visual style is a fine mix of bluesy realism and jazzy kinetics.”

Tony Rayns, Sight and Sound

“John Woo again shows he is one of the premiere orchestrators of large-scale mayhem ever to fill the screen … [The] dazzling, energetic action sequences are as close to pure cinema as anything on the market today … Hard Boiled offers a ballet of mass destruction.”

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times