4. Hard Boiled
There may be some controversy about how silly Hard Boiled is, but lets be honest: the pop culture memory of this film is entirely built around the balletic bullet battles. When you hear Hard Boiled you think the bottomless clips and a million metallic sparks for every shot fired, cops dual-wielding pistols while sliding down bannisters, and Chow-Yun Fat engaged in gunplay with a baby tucked under his arm. Of course you think those things. Those things are frigging awesome. But Hard Boiled isnt just a supercut of the most insane cinema violence. Theres an actual movie under there. The violence isnt destruction for destructions sake. It serves a greater purpose. See, director John Woo didnt approach his films as empty explosion-porn. His influences included classic Hollywood musicals, films which utilized the inherent falsehood of cinema to express HUGE emotional epiphanies. When characters in musicals had emotions that they couldnt contain, they exploded into song. In Woos films, they explode into, well, explosions. Also blood. Woo is a devout Christian, and many of his films deal with heroes struggling to attain spiritual purity in a world beset with crime and pain. The external violence is a metaphor for the internal turmoil of men wracked with guilt and doubt, and seeking to cleanse their sins and reclaim their souls. In Hard Boiled, both Chow Yun-Fats Officer Tequila and Tony Leungs undercover cop Tony are wracked with feelings of guilt after the deaths of friends and colleagues, killed in chaotic crossfires. Tony, in particular, is tormented by the betrayals he has committed both in doing his job and in trying to avoid death at the hands of cops and criminals alike. So in that final hospital scene, as the duo pair up to cleanse the earth of gleefully-evil scumbags, they are fighting not just to stay alive, but to atone for their own crimes. The violence represents two men clawing their way to redemption, one bullet at a time.