John Woo is the auteur of cool. He crystallized the heroic bloodshed genre into something Hollywood is still emulating today. Like Quentin Tarantino would do years later, he found a way to take his many influences – from Sam Peckinpah to westerns, kung fu movies to musicals – and blend them together seamlessly. His operatic sense of violence joins together with a balletic movement of gunplay.
Buy Once a ThiefBut for all his explosions, excessive use of squibs, close-ups of guns ejecting bullets, and slow-motion shots of dudes jumping through the air, Woo has always had a goofy sense of humor. Most of his action films will have a moment or two with characters making dumb jokes, or something ridiculously silly happening.
With Once a Thief, he made the comedy the biggest part of the film. Unfortunately, I’ve never been a fan of Woo’s type of big, broad, goofy comedy, and most of the jokes in this film don’t really land for me. Luckily, it intersperses his silly jokes with some good action sequences. The finale absolutely makes it worth the watch.
A trio of orphans, James (Leslie Cheung), Red Bean Pudding (Chow Yun-Fat), and Red Bean (Cherie Chung – in her last film before retirement), are taken in by a crime lord named Boss Chow (Kenneth Tsang), who teaches them to steal paintings for him. At the same time, another man becomes their Godfather (Paul Chu) who teaches them about kindness and goodness.
After one last job, Red Bean tries to talk the others into retiring. But when they are offered a whole lot of money to steal a “cursed” painting from a private collector, James decides to go for it. Red Bean Pudding decides to join him. The job goes bad, James is injured, the painting is lost, and Red Bean Pudding is presumably killed when a boat he’s on explodes.
He’ll come back two years later but in a wheelchair working for Boss Chow. Our heroes decide to do yet another last job, going after the same cursed painting. It all comes together in one spectacularly choreographed bout of ridiculous violence.
Between the heists, there is a lot of silliness. A romantic triangle forms with both James and Red Bean Pudding falling in love with Red Bean. They spend a lot of time traveling about, celebrating birthdays with trick cakes, and generally having fun. The comedy is broad, silly, and kind of dumb. It reminded me a lot of the same type of movies we used to get in America around this same time. Films like Beverly Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon 3, where in between the action you got a lot of dumb comedy. I rarely find any of that funny, and it becomes a bit tedious here.
Even the action is a bit goofy. To steal one painting, the boys have to swing trapeze-style from a chandelier, and they use some cheap wine to see the security lasers while they do silly dances to get around them. The finale includes a fight on a skateboard, a dude throwing killer playing cards, and a painting that literally shocks you when you try and take it.
But Woo is too skilled a director to make this silliness uninteresting. While I didn’t enjoy the comedy aspects of the film, the action more than makes up for it. He’s discarded his usual squib-filled carnage for something a little lighter on its feet. The gunfights are still ridiculous, but they are so much fun to watch I never once minded.
I’d call this a lesser film in Woo’s long filmography, but it is still a worthy addition to any Hong Kong cinephile’s shelf.
Shout Factory presents Once a Thief with a 4K scan from the original negative. It comes with both a UHD disc and a separate Blu-ray disc.
Extras include:
- Optional English Subtitles Newly Translated for this Release
- Audio Commentary with James Mudge, Hong Kong Film Critic at EasternKicks
- Handling a Heist: Interview with Director John Woo
- Thoughts About Thievery: Interview with Screenwriter Clifton Ko
- Stealing Some Shots: Interview with Cinematographer Poon Hang-Sang
- Interview with Producer Terence Chang
- Interview with Editor David Wu
- TBC Interview with One of Leslie Cheung’s Producers
- Hong Kong Confidential: Inside Once a Thief with Author Grady Hendrix
- Once a Star, Always an Icon: Film Critic Frank Djeng on Actor Leslie Cheung
- Archival Interview with Actor Kenneth Tsang
- Theatrical Trailer
