Hard Boiled and Deep Red: Walk in and out of Gender

 Around 1980, Hong Kong action movies were suffering after the sudden death of Bruce Lee. After many lame imitations of Bruce Lee style action movies, the Kung Fu craze had lost its steam. Near the same period, big vertically integrated studios like Shaw Brothers came to its demise and independent individual directors embraced their spring in filmmaking, which include those directors trained overseas who brought their own style in Hong Kong action movie industries. This is named New Wave movement. New Wave directors like Alex Cheung, Chang Cheh and Tsui Hark tried to reinvigorate action movies with their own personal interpretations. John Woo was then largely influenced by Chang Cheh’s martial arts movies with great emphasis on masculinity where a young male protagonist engage in a blood shedding fight with villains even he was seriously wounded.

Hard Boiled begins with a shootout in the tearoom. Tequila and his colleagues undertook the mission to apprehend the gun-smuggling villains. Tequila fisted two handguns and fought through the barricaded tearoom.  The slow-motion camera work captured the tension between Tequila and villains and the rhythm of violence precisely.  However, the next moment, Tequila was kneeling beside his dead colleague, with debris on his face and blood on his cloth. The scene for displaying masculinity is juxtaposed beside the contemplative scene of loss.  Tequila’s monolithic tough hero masculinity is dented.

On the other hand, Tony appeared in the movie with a calm and imperturbable face. He drove a car to kill his target like taking a trip. He used his handkerchief not to leave any footprints on the turnpike and he killed his man with a gun from a book at a library. The scene is very stylish and innovative. However, the camera shot in the next minute shifted to the place he lived and cut a lonely and pensive figure.

In the movie, Tony lived in a boat signaling his psychic isolation from what he was doing and he folded paper crones full of contrition for people he killed. Tequila blew a song for every dead colleague whose death was directly or indirectly related to his rashness. Arun Kumar said that there was a sense of melancholy and loss beneath Tony and Tequila.  The two main characters are both lacking and they are bonded to save each other from losing themselves.

After Tequila discovered the true identity of Tony as an undercover, he allied with Tony to fight the big villain Johnny.  Here, Woo explored the masculinity intimacy between cops in a variation on Western buddy themed movies. Kenneth E. Halls found that most of the buddy films concerned brotherhood between policemen and detectives. They were either two policemen who disliked each other and came into an agreement in the final fight against the villain like The French Connection and Bullitt or one of them reflecting the negative feature of the other. However, Hard Boiled worked within and against this schema. Tequila, the inspector could not team with Tony, the undercover openly. They had to protect each other secretly at the risk of exposing the other to danger. It was this strained brotherhood forged by lurking dangers and luring temptations that redefined the masculinity.

After Tony finished off the target, he visited Hoi and the conversation between them gave a feel of man-to-man friendship that is hard to define. In the movie, Hoi confessed to Tony that he always put the loyalty and emotion on top of his priority. Tony also persuaded Hoi to stop being involved in the crimes. Although they were from different factions they can talk real things to each other. Hard Boiled moved beyond the brotherhood limited to detectives. Through the movie, this masculinity intimacy or bonding was seen in villain circles, between cops and the gangster informer and even between two rivals.

Chow Yun-Fat said that maybe in old days, people’s friendship is more simple and willed instead of now being in a cold world (10 minutes into the interview). He remarked that men can talk real thing in their heart to men. This is the philosophy that John Woo tried to convey in Hard Boiled.

 

John Woo gave new life to traditional action movies by modifying conventional masculinity into an intimate man-to-man relationship. He deepened this masculinity intimacy by conflicts and choice. Tony and Hoi were close to each other but he had to put honor on top of that. Tony and Tequila were different kinds of existence, but they were bonded by honor and loyalty.  Therefore, loyalty, sacrifice and masculinity intimacy were interwoven in Hard Boiled. John Woo walked into the male gender by exploring these interdependent meanings. Doing this, John Woo redefined the meaning of masculinity in traditional action movies. Although Hollywood movies did not absorb much of this masculinity conflicts and intimacy, Hard Boiled does offer a new perspective for Hollywood buddy themed action movies.

Italian gallio films were deeply influenced by Italian neo-realism which put a great emphasis on things occurred among ordinary people. They moved from supernatural fantasies to horror based on crime scenes. Psychological factors and exploitation are often seen in these films and faced great accusation of their sadistic connotation. Instead of walking into the gender, Dario Argento walked out of gender by getting rid of critic’s prejudicial attribution of misogyny and machoism to horror movies.

Deep Red is a typical film reflecting Dario Argento’s self-conscious avoidance on audience’s gendered sadistic identification with the violence this movie captures.

 Marcus was the helpless spectator who although tried to track the criminal with his intelligence, tried to take an active part in stopping it,  was in the end subject to witnessing gruesome death one after another.  There was a scene when he noticed that an important picture was missing from the crime scene and figured out that it must be the killer who took it. However, that was in the end, just a mirror. It was the killer’s face on the mirror that he mistook for a picture. Marcus prized intelligence was here thrown into chaos, and in this chaos, he lost his control and became a helpless witness to gruesome scenes.  Chuck Bowen claimed that this movie opened people to the chaos that reason and intelligence could not manage.Eyes and sharp, repulsive means of torture are the recurrent elements in this movie. There were now and then eyes in the dark, sharp broken glass shards stuck into the flesh, head into the boiling water and bumping the head onto the corner of the table. Here the neo-realism effect on real-life horror elements can be clearly seen in this movie. Instead of mainly exploiting the torture of women as a thrilling factor, Deep Red forced the spectators to confront the daily life terrifying events that they are more likely to identify with. It is not sadistic voyeurism but forced spectatorship of something already repulsive in daily life.

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Helga, a telepathic, was first panicked with the sense of the murderer’s coming steps, then was prostrated with a cleaver hit on the shoulder. The camera shot then followed the movement of the murderer in a somberly slow pace . The criminal is another perspective  the audience can identify with. In Deep Red, the killer took the form of an eye and a leather gloved hand with a cleaver symbolizing both the means to watch and the means to torture. Mulvey in “Visual and Other Pleasures”  considered this as male voyeurism. However, there is no thrilling element in killing people and the criminal perspective is just another window into the horror. Argento drained most physical dimensions of the murderer and took the audience hostage by fusing the eye of the killer with the camera shot. People are forced to view the torture and at the same time, they are forced to do the torturing.

 In Righetti’s death scene, ravens being killed, a doll hanging from the ceiling and the unusual darkness, these chaotic events signals a manic lurking there. The boiling water by which she was killed burned as much to her flesh as to the audience’s.This is the victim’s perspective. Although no direct victim perspectives can be seen in this movie, people shared the same sense of terror by psychological patterns, the building up atmosphere and the means of torture.

In the end, Argento said in 1985 documentary Dario Argento’s World of Horror, “I want the spectator sucked into the scene. I want him to approach objects or people. In the end, it is you, the spectator, who kills or who is murdered.”

Both Hard Boiled and Deep Red made an experiment with their respective genres by either exploring the rich meanings of masculinity or getting out of gendered identification with female victims. Although Hard Boiled did not receive much credit in China, it was greatly applauded by North America and United Kingdom’s audience by its distinctive Hong Kong style. Deep Red grossed $629,903 in United States although this was much less than ₤3,709 billion it received in Italy. Anyway, they are both movies with its distinctive personal signature.

Resources:

Hard Boiled

Journalistic:

Arun Kumar‘s “John Woo’s ‘Hard-Boiled’ – An Analysis”

Academic:

Kenneth E. Halls’s book “John Woo- The Films”

Primary Historical:

Chow Yun-Fat’s interview 

Still Frames.

Deep Red

Journalistic:

Chuck Bowen’s  Blue-ray Review: Deep Red

Academic:

Mulvey’s  “Visual and Other Pleasures”

Primary Historical:

1985 documentary Dario Argento’s World of Horror

Still Frames