- ESSAY - |
Johnny's gone to Hollywood
When John Woo goes West and is mis-understood. |
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In 1992,
there were still 5 years to go before Hong Kong was handed over to Mainland China. At this
time, the local film industry was euphoric. The colony was unaware that it was the golden
age of the Cantonese cinema. This is the time John Woo chose to leave to the USA.
Whilst shooting Hard Boiled, John Woo already knew that he wasn't going to stay in
HK, Hollywood was waiting for him. |
Homepage - Part 2
Hard
Boiled was one of his first movies to be distributed in
the West, and it provoked hysteria for those who discovered it (a 2-hour long gunfight!).
 However, the movie
gets rid of one of the principal dimensions characterizing the rest of Woo's filmography,
that is to say the dramatic aspect. Hard Boiled had some piece of romanticism
attached to it of course. It was however more the compilation of all the Woo's stylish
gimmicks that stuck into people's mind than his romanticism. The melodramatic dimension,
which will be developed below, had a part in the rejection Woo's American career has been
subjected to.
Why John Woo's films in Hollywood
aren't well considered by fans, whereas Hard Boiled is loved by Woo's aficionados?
Hard Boiled is from far Woo's most American movie.
Is it because Woo has worked with Jean-Claude Van Damme that he has lost his skills?
The answers aren't as simple and straightforward as it appeared.
 
Woo's first Hollywood experience, Hard Target, with
Jean-Claude Van Damme is the beginning of the HK director troubles with American
producers. The film is a vague remake of The Most Dangerous Game by Schoedsack and
Cooper. It's a perfect example to illustrate how powerful stars can be in Hollywood.
Entirely narcissistic and at the pinnacle of fame, Van Damme simply imposed his views to a
stunned John Woo. If one gets rid of the clumsy romance (and with which John Woo seemed
not at ease) and if one disregards Van Damme's performance, the movie is a pretty good
surprise for a first-timer in the Hollywood studios. In addition, Woo experienced for the
first time some test-screenings, which were terrible. Slow motions, freeze frames and fast
motions within action scenes were amongst the various things that gave rise to
misunderstandings. Where John Woo used his own cinematic syntax, the local audience
reacted with laughter leaving him at a loss. However, John Woo tried to use the codes and
clichés of the western genre (The Hollywood genre par excellence), but it wasn't enough.
In contrast, the scenario fortunately appeared as a more judicious choice. From this
script, Woo managed to almost create a twilight atmosphere.
 
John Woo was lucid and wasn't deluding
himself about the American dream. For his first feature on the American soil, he chose to
talk about outcasts from this society. In a way, He came in Hollywood discreetly through
the small door, whereas he pulled off a coup for his last film in Hong-Kong. This may be
one of the reasons why the audience turned their back on Hard Target. However, both
movies, Hard Boiled and Hard Target, share an idea in common. Hard Boiled
is an uncompromising statement about the 1997 handover and about a society being rotten by
triads. Hard Target is a raw statement on the people in the fringes of society. The
first one talks about those who seize power by all means while the second one deals with
those who haven't had any power for a long time. In both cases, John Woo carefully looks
at the worlds that surround him.
Broken
Arrow is another step in Woo's 'Americanisation'.
After his attempt to make use of the western genre visual codes in Hard Target, he
now uses the genre's setting. It's a logical approach even if the end result isn't up to
the expectations. After having filmed bodies in confined places, John Woo now tries to
shoot on location huge spaces.
 Even if
A Bullet In The Head was shot on location and in natural areas, it didn't reveal
such dimension. This dimension is actually absent from Woo's cinema. The HK topography and
the rush to complete production never really let the director develop this aspect. The
fact is there is nothing else to look for in Broken Arrow than a mere apprentice
movie. John Woo was trained for shooting big areas on location (that he'll magisterially
use in Windtalkers) and he was trained to use SFXs. John Woo explored new horizons.
The end result is weird, it's not really a blockbuster (in the sense that the movie
doesn't dwarf the characters), it's not really a western nor a real John Woo's
movie. Broken Arrow looks like a first movie if one doesn't take into
account the perfectly mastered technical aspect of the film. This is the movie in Woo's
entire American career that is the furthest from his usual themes and concerns. Woo event
declared that when he first saw this movie on TV, it took him twenty minutes before
realising he made it!
 
However, the movie is quite consistent and
fine to watch. Probably due to John Travolta who manages to make the villain much more
charismatic than the good guy (Christian Slater). His character is a bit like Castor Troy
from Face Off. "Let's put their sense of humour into test," he
says while turning on a nuclear bomb! Even if he tends to ham it up a bit, Travolta
delivers a spicy performance. In addition, Woo finds in Travolta a character that can be
compared to Chow Yun Fat: an actor in which he can project himself. Finally, John Woo
signs with Broken Arrow his less personal piece of work and therefore the most
contestable. But thanks to its success at the US box office, Woo got hired to shoot Face
Off. On top of that, as Woo tried to learn a new language to tell his story, this
movie wasn't as vain and pointless as many people thought it was.
 
Part 2
Produced by world-wide acclaimed
actor Michael Douglas, Face Off was supposed to take place in the future. John Woo, not being at ease with a
project showing the future a la Blade Runner, managed to convince everybody
involved to set the action into our present days. This movie is undoubtedly the most
theoretical one in the career of Woo. The movie allows to focus on the moviemaker
schizophrenia because he's constantly looking for his own cinema. Face Off is a big
question mark. Nothing in Woo's filmography looks like it. In another hand John Woo
emphasizes on the main dimensions which have disappeared from his work after he crossed
the Pacific Ocean: friendship and brotherhood. He'll get back these dimensions into his
cinema with Windtalkers.
 
If one has to describe Woo's American films
the most simplistically possible, one would say that they are nothing else than struggles
of the good versus the evil. Face Off proves that this pattern isn't enough for the
filmmaker. He goes beyond this simple notion of good and evil, and he put his characters
into each other shoes and literally makes them become the other, the most
hated person in the world. It's the first time Woo wonders about the foundation of his own
work. This interrogation reaches a climax during the scene when Castor Troy and Sean
Archer face each other with a gun, but in front of a mirror. The Mexican stand off,
a stylish item that Woo has contributed to popularize and that is collectively associated
to his films, is here absolutely impaired. The fact that a character wishes the death of
the other becomes automatically a symbolic suicide. Overall this scene allows to address
this issue: Isn't Woo's work a cinema that finally fights against itself?
 
If Woo gets rid of the brotherhood dimension
in his Hollywood films, he seems to replace it here by a family unit aspect. It's a first
time in his work, and it has an unexpected switch: the family is seen from the standpoint
of someone who did everything to destroy it but who has to live with it. The worm is in
the apple. If Woo's brought cinematic style in Hollywood, the Hollywood cinema has
contaminated the filmmaker's work as well. With Face Off, it's very hard to know
what is the worm and what is the apple. In all his American career, this film is the most
acclaimed by his fans, but it is paradoxically the coldest and the less instinctive.
From there, it's easy to understand why John Woo agreed to direct Mission Impossible 2.
It was to get back the romanticism aspect that was absent from his previous films made in
the USA.
John Woo's involvement with Mission Impossible 2 is weird.
After making Face Off which was acclaimed by the audience and the critics, Woo
agreed to Tom Cruise to direct the sequel of Brian De Palma's film. The interesting idea
behind all this is to give each Mission Impossible instalment a different
personality with a different director. It's a bonus compared to the rival franchise James
Bond, where no director personality influences the end result.
 
Anyway, if Woo was chosen by Tom Cruise, it wasn't only because of his special touch but
also because the HK director proved that he was able to make big budget film on time.
After three movies and two TV series (Once a Thief and Black Jack), it's
hard to imagine John Woo not being fully aware of what he is about to do. He's about to
make a vehicle for big star Tom Cruise, who is also producer on MI2. The whole
movie is then dedicated to Cruise, hence the fact that he has never been so well filmed.
Woo successfully emphasized on Cruise's grace and assets. One of the director trick to do
so was his romantic approach of the Ethan Hunt character.
 The lack of balance in MI2 comes from the
fact that nobody else has a screen charisma as strong as Cruise. Neither Douglas Scott nor
Tandie Newton have his dramatic intensity. One cannot help dreaming of the result if the
choice of Woo for the bad guy had been respected.
Indeed, Taiwanese-born HK-based actor Takeshi Kaneshiro (Fallen Angels & Chungking Expresss) was the first choice for
the Douglas Scott's character. No doubt that such actor would have glamorise a bit more
the movie, and would have helped John Woo to face up to the fact that he wanted to make
romantic spy movie.
The film, as it is, isn't a mere commercial
for Tom Cruise, it's also a John Woo movie. It's a blockbuster, but even if the car and
motorcycle stunts are very impressive, there are not mere technical feats. There is this
feeling that Woo wanted to treat object (cars, motorcycles) almost like characters. They
are in a way an extension of these characters (each character rides a motorcycle whose
design represents their personality). From there, Woo has a simple idea that some might
consider as naive. Why don't we make a dance choreography, like a ballet, with these
things? After all, Hollywood supported financially the whole project, why should he
hesitate?
 
Finally Woo made one of his most naive film.
Thinking about it, it's weird to realise that MI2 is one of the most criticised
film (with Broken Arrow) in all Woo's American career. It has however the same
brand of innocence as Once A Thief, the HK film he made with Chow Yun Fat and
Leslie Cheung. Funny enough, both films share the same reference for the thief scene, the
Jule Dassin's TopKapi. Finally, the main reproaches made to MI2 were for
elements already present in Woo's Cantonese films.
Windtalkers is from far the most Cantonese of John Woo's American movies. The film hasn't
been a wide success in the USA or in France. The rejection of this film is surprising. If
it was legitimate to have some reservations about Broken Arrow, to ignore what
Woo's work in the USA brought him, is equal to misunderstand the basis of his work. If
some of Woo's themes have disappeared in his first US movies, MI 2 and overall Windtalkers
are proofs that Woo never really gave up on them.
Looking closely, John Woo's career in Hollywood is nearly
perfect! With the first two movies (Hard Target and Broken Arrow) Woo tried
to fit into the US system. That is to say he never though he was already a big name but
that he had a lot to learn. He fundamentally questioned himself with Face Off and
he searched what part of his cinema he changed by crossing the Pacific Ocean and what part
he has already lost. Finally, MI2 and Windtalkers (even more) are signs of
the re-setting of his world within Hollywood films. It's such a shame that the audience
acclaimed MI2 and not Windtalkers.
The project to make a western movie with Nicolas Cage and
Chow Yun Fat is on hold at the moment. It's said that Woo's next movie will be a remake of
a Philip K. Dick book, a writer whose themes and concerns are miles away from John Woo's.
Let's hope that it will be a brand new opportunity for Woo to explore new horizons.
Written
by David Aneas, November 2002.
Freely translated by Thomas, May 2003.
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