Like most great auteurs, John Woo is obsessed with certain themes. His films often deal with ideas of masculinity, brotherhood, obsessions, loyalty, and betrayal. Bullet in the Head isn’t my favorite film of his, but it might be the best summation of those themes.
Buy Bullet in the HeadThree boyhood friends, Ben (Tony Leung), Paul (Waise Lee), and Frank (Jacky Cheung), grew up on the mean streets of Hong Kong in 1967 in the midst of protests and riots concerning British colonization of the city. They grew up poor, and they grew up tough, but they never ventured into a true life of crime.
When Ben gets married, Frank borrows some money from his uncle to pay for the reception. But on his way there, he is accosted by a gang. He gets his head cracked by a bottle but manages to escape with the money. When Ben sees Frank all battered and bloody, he rushes out, on his wedding night, to get revenge. In the mayhem, he accidentally kills the leader of that gang.
The wife seems to understand all this. Ben has always been an agent of chaos, and so she just sort of shrugs off the fact that her brand-new husband has just killed a man and has to flee for his life. Maybe he’ll come back later, maybe he won’t. C’est la vie.
The three friends head to Vietnam with a load of contraband. This is in the midst of the war with America, and they’ve heard there is a lot of money to be made in smuggling. But before they can even get going, a Viet Cong soldier bicycles a bomb towards some Vietnamese officials. The explosion destroys the contraband and their car. Thinking they might have had a part in the explosion, Vietnamese soldiers pick them up and beat them. When the real bomber is caught, the soldiers shoot him in the head right in front of our heroes.
From there, Ben decides that might makes right. Those with the guns make all the rules so they get them some guns. They meet a guy named Luke (Simon Yam) who works for the gangster they were supposed to sell the contraband to. Luke is in love with a singer named Sally (Yolinda Yam), who’s basically been enslaved by the gangster. They bust her out and steal some gold. Once again, they find themselves on the run.
Paul becomes obsessed with the gold. On the run from the gangsters and the Viet Cong, he constantly puts himself and the lives of others on the line in order to secure the gold. Like some extra in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, gold becomes his master.
Once again, they are caught by the Viet Cong. This time they are taken to a camp and tortured. Frank is forced to kill some American soldiers or be killed himself. Ben goes a little crazy, and with the help of an American Army attack, they escape. On and on it goes. It seems like the entire film they are on the run. Until they aren’t. Eventually they make it home, but their time abroad changed them.
Paul’s greed destroyed his friendship with the others. Frank was always a gentle man, and all that forced violence destroyed his soul. Ben, too, lost himself in his eagerness to use violence to get what he wants.
This is the most emotional John Woo has ever been. His films have always been prone to melodrama, and if I’m being honest, I tend not to like that aspect of his movies. I don’t know if it’s the language barriers, or a cultural thing, or maybe how Woo tends to paint his emotional scenes with a big brush, but I rarely connect to those moments. But here I really felt their anguish.
It also contains some of his biggest action sequences. The war setting allows him to really go all out. There are airstrikes, helicopter attacks, massive explosions, and all sorts of gun battles. But bigger isn’t always better. The action sequences here are very good, but they’ve lost that operatic ballet quality Woo’s films are famous for.
This film feels very personal. Like, Woo was really digging into all the things that matter to him. It is still full of big explosions, thousands of bullets, and blood-soaked squibs, but he’s trying to say something meaningful with all that. The film was originally planned as a third part to the A Better Tomorrow trilogy. It was set to be a prequel, allowing Chow Yun-Fat’s character to still be in it despite dying in an earlier film. But interpersonal conflicts with producer Tsui Hark, led Woo to turn that story into this unconnected movie.
Woo’s original cut was more than three hours long, but the Golden Princess studio forced him to cut it down to just over two hours in length. Over the years, there have been multiple versions of the film released in different markets. The version presented here in UHD is Woo’s preferred cut. Also included on a third disc is a “Festival Cut” with a few additional minutes added in.
As I said in the beginning of this review, this is not my favorite John Woo film, but it might be his best in terms of his themes and emotional weight. It is a fine movie, and this is a great release.
Extras include the following:
Disc One (4K UHD – feature film)
- New 4K scan from the original camera negative
- Presented in Dolby Vision
- New audio commentary by film critic Frank Djeng
- Newly translated English subtitles
Disc Two (Blu-ray – feature film)
- New 4K scan from the original camera negative
- Audio commentary by Frank Djeng
- Newly translated English subtitles
Disc Three (Blu-ray – special features)
- Festival Cut
- Alternate boardroom ending
- Brilliance With a Bullet – interview with John Woo
- Head Case – interview with Waise Lee
- Army of One – interview with Terence Chang
- Apocalypse Woo – interview with David Wu
- Tumultuous Times – interview with Catherine Lau
- Hong Kong Confidential – with author Grady Hendrix
- Apocalypse How? – interview with Lars Laamann
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don’t know the behind the scenes, but feels like he was concerned it might be his last movies so he made three or four movies and edited them together.
It is A LOT of movie. I don’t think the original three hour cut still exists but it would be interesting to see what else he tried to pack into this thing.