Hong Kong Movie Director John Woo: Poetry in Action

Explosions, hand-to-hand combat, gun fights, vehicle chases are all the elements that make up the bread and butter of the movie industry, draw big headlines and achieve record breaking ticket sales. Action movies are among the most popular genres but in order to truly appeal to the masses, they require more than just fluff. We have witnessed the works of many a notable visionaries of the action genre including the likes of James Cameron and John McTiernan who gave us Terminator, Die Hard, Aliens, Predators representing the classics and Tony Scott and Michael Bay who brought us the contemporary action films like Top Gun, Enemy of the State, Armageddon, Transformers, and such. But there is one who took action to a whole new depth with his attention to detail, balletic violence, and captivatingly flawed characters. His name is John Woo.

If you don’t already know the Hong Kong movie director John Woo, you most probably have heard of or seen his masterpieces which include major blockbusters such as Hard Boiled, Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, The Killer, Broken Arrow, Hard Target, and Red Cliff to name a few. You too might be all too familiar with his various trademark movie sequences where actors either wield two guns, one in each hand, crossing their arms in front while running and shooting, or get caught in a Mexican standoff. Did I mention that doves or pigeons usually make an appearance as well, usually in slow motion sequences flying above the actors head while he cocks his double-barrelled shotgun? He is the directorial poet of action movies, the bullet-spraying master of violence whose repertoire of work include the picturesque depiction of gritty pain and violence in slow motion action sequences.

With his enormous success today, the Hong Kong movie director who came from humble beginnings is a true self-made man. During his childhood, his family was aided by a local church, where Woo attended school. In the beginning a different path was envisaged for him. His time at the church inspired him to join the men of the cloth but a priest who Woo looked up to, told him his free-spiritedness and artistic views were not suitable for priesthood and so ends his aspirations to devote his life to religion. There is a saying that goes, “When God shuts a door, He opens a window.” When John Woo’s initial path closed their doors on him, he turned to movies. During his adolescence, his mother would take him to the theatres despite their poverty to see western imports. It is there where he developed a tenacious passion for the art of cinematography and decided to become a filmmaker. The rest as we know it is history.

On the 4^th of December next month, we will see the release of the Hong Kong movie director’s latest work of art in The Crossing Part 1. An epic romance set during the turbulence of wartime and a tragedy of a capsized steamship in 1949. The motion picture boasts a transnational cast of the most celebrated actors and actresses in Asia, to wit: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Zhiyi, Song Hye-kyo, Huang Xioming, Tong Dawei, and Masami Nagasawa. Is this the Chinese version of Titanic on steroids you ask? Not quite because it is much more than that. The Crossing is a romance, disaster, and war film of epic proportions that truly looks spectacular in this trailer here. Like John Woo’s Red Cliff, The Crossing will be cut down into two parts with the sequel scheduled for release in mid 2015.

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