This week I watched two movies. The first was Hard Boiled, a Chinese action film directed by John Woo. Many people consider this Woo’s try out for American action films and he did not hold anything back. The second film could not be more drastically different. Love, Lies, and Videotape was directed by Steven Soderbergh.

On one hand, Hard Boiled is about Tequila, a special investigator with the Hong Kong Police, who teams up with an undercover cop to take down a mob. If you asked the average person about this film, they would assume it was straight out of Hollywood based on the plot alone. This movie, however, was a gigantic step away from the Kung-Foo era action flicks of the 1970s and 1980s and towards more American styled action film with guns, explosions, and violence. Though this film borrows quite a bit from American culture, Detective Yuen earned his nickname Tequila from his heavy drinking habit.

On the other hand, Love, Lies, and Videotape was a dramatic dive into the lives of 4 individuals who lie on different levels of being a lover, liar, and voyeur. Soderbergh’s film was a groundbreaking honest and emotional film that asked questions about infidelity, sexual suppression, and facing it all with openness.

Though these films are dramatically different, they both raise questions about manhood and manliness that can be related to one another. Hard Boiled can be described as an over the top action buddy film. It hits the notes perfectly, two action heroes working side by side. The audience is unsure of one and rooting wholeheartedly for the other. Over time, their bond grows and the audience is allowed to get to know their on-screen buddy. In the academic journal, Reinventing Masculinity: The Spectacle of Male Intimacy in the Films of John Woo Sandell dives into this specific topic and notes, “As with many buddy movies, however, the moments of intimacy can only occur when facilitated by violence, and throughout Woo’s films the heroes are constantly subjected to pain. Indeed, the most intimate moments occur when one or the other is wounded and being nursed by the other (Sandell p. 29)”. This provides Hard Boiled, and other action films like it, impermeable boundaries especially regarding intimacy and especially regarding intimacy between two male characters.

Contrastingly, the film Love, Lies, and Videotape welcomes the intimate exchange between men while at the same time confronting it with characters who aren’t open. Graham is a journalist of sorts. He spends his time recording women talk about their sexual experience. Graham’s existence itself is a confrontation with manliness as he is impotent. In addition to that, he openly expresses that though he tapes mostly women he enjoys taping men from time to time as he explains in this scene with Ann.

Even the way Grahams apartment is filmed in this scene expresses an openness; when the camera follows Graham we are exposed to the entirety of his apartment which is pretty much a blank slate.

Both films invoke a certain perception of what manhood is, however, Love, Lies, and Videotape offers two versions. One, in John who is a very powerful, hypersexual and dishonest husband to his wife Ann. In the end, we see that his lack of intimate commitment to either Ann or Cynthia leaves him alone without either. Viewers might for a moment, think that John’s smooth approach, money, and power are key to his way with women, however, Graham provides a stark contrast by getting to know women through intimate exchanges.

In Hard Boiled, we see the classic anti-authority figure in Tequila. He is quiet but angry and determined. This closes him to women and makes his relationship with Teresa Chong (his on-screen girlfriend) seem very superficial. This could be seen as a feature of Tequila’s – that everything besides his work, his pain, and his determination falls to the wayside. This film does not derive its manliness from how Tequila navigates his relationships but how he wields his gun. This is best said by Johnny Wong, “In this world, the man who holds the gun rules the world”. This film is riddled with action sequences that top some of the best in Hollywood. In this scene, the shootout takes place in a teahouse full of men. Tequila wastes little time using his hands to combat the restaurant full of arms dealers. The scene also quickly points out the main target who is standing alone, gun in hand, shooting towards our beloved anti-hero.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape uses violence of intimacy where intimacy is a sort of weapon against each individual. Violence can be described as strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force and there are certainly examples of that in this movie. John’s relationship with Cynthia represents an emotional and intimacy violence upon Ann. Her sexual suppression, which tortures Ann, is a form of intimate violence upon herself.

So, at first glance, these films do not see relatable at all but in the storyline we see that they use similar elements to engage the audience, they just use different mediums to express these human experiences. In the end, both movies follow the evolution of the characters. For Ann, this was a journey of self-discovery as she indulged in a man who was in touch with his sensitive side. The irony is not lost on Graham’s ability to awaken Ann’s sexuality even though he is impotent. For Tequila, this means bonding with his male counterpart and finally putting an end to the Hong Kong mob.  Overall, when analyzing the difference between these two movies it is clear that they’re deep within the subtext of each movie but the importance of the storytelling

https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.losrios.edu/stable/pdf/1213555.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A1bbbd9085f9364856a4c9dcdbd57df33

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On-w0J6uQyY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bozxgVQ9m0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wYCh5nxyCI

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104684/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23462333?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents