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Tequila conveniently finds out about the raid from an informant and shows up armed to the teeth. Things go bad when he intervenes in the raid, triggering the second largest gunfight in the history of guns and fights. For the better part of 15 minutes, everyone shoots everyone else and everything in the world explodes before Tequila finally comes face to face with a new adversary. Tony covers Wong's escape, and openly taunts Tequila - who becomes obsessed with bringing down this mysterious, arrogant killer. This kind of sounds like an episode of Miami Vice, except the plot is even harder to follow and everyone is wearing socks.

But it’s not always clear what's happening and why, and not just during the explodey parts. It's also because most of the movie hinges on one major plot point that makes very little sense. Of course, there's a reason Tequila is warned to avoid the case, but when he finally figures it out it's a little hard to understand why he was kept in the dark for so long. It becomes a bullshit singularity that forces several other subplots to also not make sense, and by the third act it's sucked all the logic right out of the film. All that's left is - finally - the largest gunfight in the history of guns and fights, and it goes on for so long you kind of become numb to it and stop caring.

But the plot isn't what you came for, right? A John Woo movie means lots of awkward, forced emotion, bird symbolism and mega violent super slow motion gun battles that will peel the enamel right off your teeth. And considering the total absence of logic, character development and credible dialogue here, the action scenes can't help but stand out. Everything is flammable, the good guys never get seriously hurt and nobody ever runs out of ammo. This sounds totally awesome, yet I called Hard Boiled “somehow” inferior to the American films it so desperately wants to be.

Why is that? It's because for all their over the top action, stupid dialogue and contempt for even the most basic laws of physics, great action films always have at least one tiny sliver of logic running through them that holds the whole damn thing together. No matter how dumb the movie is you can always say "Well, you know they kidnapped his daughter" or "They sold him out and left him for dead". Tequila does lose his partner at the beginning, but at the other end of this needlessly convoluted, totally nonsensical story it's not really about that anymore. It's about trying to mimic something without understanding how it’s really put together. As a result, Hard Boiled almost comes across as satire instead of homage.

It’s not awful, it’s just not nearly as good as it could be, or should be. Still, Woo’s style deeply influenced the next generation of filmmakers so whatever you think of action movies today, you can probably thank John Woo for at least some of it. Yippie Ki-Yay, America.

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