50 Greatest Action Movies Of All Time

49. Hard Boiled (1992)

Crank 2
Golden Princess Film Production

John Woo's last Hong Kong movie before he departed for Hollywood is also his best, the director utilising all of his visual trademarks to create a non-stop barrage of shootouts and fistfights that made Hollywood action cinema hang its head in shame.

Hard Boiled opens with a spectacular gunfight in a tea house, and from there things only escalate; Chow Yun-Fat's single-handed assault on a warehouse full of henchman is a thing of beauty, while the climactic hospital set-piece boasts a three-minute unbroken take that has to be seen to be believed. Plenty of slow-motion, balletic gunplay and a hefty dose of diving through the air firing two guns; Hard Boiled is John Woo at his most inimitable.

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