BULLET IN THE HEAD
A film review by Will FitzHugh
Copyright 1996 Will FitzHugh
Bullet In The Head (1990)
This is the first John Woo movie I've seen (unless you count 'Hard Target' which I've tried to erase from my memory) and for the most part I was impressed. It starts off weakly, though, as we follow three friends through some character introduction sequences of sterile gang fighting (set to the Monkees' 'I'm A Believer'), dancing, and general goofiness. I was reminded of some James Dean flick; this is painful stuff. One particularly odious scene shows Ben, Frank and Paul racing bicycles towards the end of a pier in what might be some kind of homage to the 'chickie run' in 'Rebel Without A Cause'. Slow motion, overly dramatic music; I was questioning my decision to go to the movies at all.
Luckily the action picks up a little as Frank has to borrow money from a loan shark to pay for Ben's wedding reception and gets bloodied by some of Ringo's punks while carrying the money. He and Ben later kill Ringo and they and Paul hide out in the hills. They get a job smuggling penicillin to Saigon and we're off to Vietnam, where the brutality really kicks in.
They almost immediately run into trouble as they get caught in a riot caused by an assasination attempt, lose the contraband in an explosion and get rounded up in the search for the bomber. These kids are obviously in over their heads. After the bomber gets brutally executed in front of them they go to a nightclub where they get involved with a Hong Kong singing star who's been kidnapped, addicted to heroin and forced into prostitution. She's been enslaved by the gangster they were supposed to deliver the goods to. Ben (the married one) falls for her. They meet up with another man, Luke, who for some reason trusts them, and together they set up a raid on the nightclub. Massive violence ensues (again set to the Monkees, changing the way I'll listen to 'I'm A Believer' forever) as they get a chest full of gold and the girl while wiping out the gangster's army of goons. Paul begins to show signs of being a weasel when he urges Luke to drive away with the gold before Ben and Frank escape.
They escape on a boat but Paul, Frank and Ben are captured by the North Vietnamese army. Prison camp. Forced to shoot Americans. Torture. Luke joins Americans in rescue. Paul and Frank escape with the gold again but Paul puts a bullet in the wounded Frank's brain when his screams threaten to give them away. Paul then shoots Ben while escaping on a boat with the gold. All four survive somehow in various states of mutilation.
Later, Ben and Luke meet up in Saigon and find Frank, a virtual vegetable, who they put out of his misery. Ben joins the trail of refugees to Hong Kong and finds his wife and child. He also tracks down Paul, who is now head of a shady corporation devoted to money laundering. They fight to the death, eventually ending up by the docks amid explosions, Paul face down with Frank's skull beside him. Yow.
It's not too original to compare Woo to Peckinpah. The action sequences use lots of angles and slow motion to drag out the violence to almost unbearable length. Woo also shows Peckinpah's inability to realistically portray scenes of normal human interaction; the character development early in the film is torturous. But Woo's scenes of the Vietnam war are chilling compared to American versions. Never would a Hollywood director be able to show prisoner killing prisoner. I hope his next Hollywood project works out better than... what was the name of that film? I can't remember.
Will FitzHugh
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