50 Greatest Action Movies Of All Time

49. Hard Boiled (1992)

Hard Boiled
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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