American and Hong Kong Action Films
When comparing the action films of Hong Kong to the typical action films of America, certain differences are clearly visible. The films from Hong Kong feature more melodrama, more fast-paced action scenes, and most noticeably, more graphic violence, than the action films released in the US. When looking at what these Hong Kong films were influenced by, especially the films of John Woo, it is surprising to see that many of these differences from American cinema are, in fact, inspired by American cinema. In John Woo's most critically acclaimed and popular films in both Asia and the US, he has drawn aspects from other works of fiction across the globe. He then takes these aspects and adds his own touches to them to make them something distinctly Hong Kong.
John Woo first made his mark as a director on Hong Kong audiences in 1986, with the epic crime-drama A Better Tomorrow. The film tells the story of two brothers, one an ex-con, the other an undercover cop, and how they eventually team-up to fight a common enemy. The film is foremost a drama about the love of family (both of blood and crime), but there are two scenes involving gunplay that helped redefine not only John Woo's career, but also the action genre itself in Hong Kong. It is interesting though, that both of these scenes draw heavily from scenes found in other films from other countries (Logan 124).
The first scene occurs early on in the film as mob enforcer Mark Gor (played by Chow Yun-Fat) kills a gang of criminals for revenge of a comrade's death. What made this scene so original and groundbreaking when compared to other action films in Hong Kong at the time was the way John Woo directed this gunfight, and the fact that it wa...
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... drawing upon. Now the same phenomenon is happening in America. The Wachowski brothers appropriated Woo's stylized shoot-out and added martial arts to it to make something entirely new for The Matrix. And even Tarantino had something new to give the genre, with his inclusion of quickly-delivered pop-culture referencing pastiche dialogue, something that is continually used today. This combination of appropriation and originality ensures the action and crime genres will constantly be able to reinvent itself, on both sides of the Pacific.
Works Cited
Logan, Bey. Hong Kong Action Cinema. Woodstock: Overlook, 1995.
Rodham Stokes, Lisa and Michael Hoover. City On Fire: Hong Kong Cinema. London: Verso, 1999.
Dannen, Fredric, and Barry Long. Hong Kong Babylon. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. Suffolk: BFI, 1997.
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