BULLET IN THE HEAD (1990)
"Bullet in the Head" is an uneven and flawed film. It's John Woo's pet project, the one that he put most heart and soul into. Comparing to his classic "A Better Tomorrow" and "The Killer", it is more like a long and excruciating personal nightmare that haunts its creator and unexpectedly, has haunted the audience too.
The movie opens in the orange glow of a warm and cheerful Hong Kong in 1967. Three friends grow up together in the slum: Ben, Frank and Paul. On Ben's wedding night, Frank borrows from local gangs to pay for the wedding's expenses and gets beat up by a rival gang. In a heated revenge attempt for his friend, Ben kills the gangster. To escape jail and disillusioned by the lack of prospects in Hong Kong, 3 friends decide to run to Vietnam, at the time on the brink of war, in search of opportunity to make it big.
The trio immediately encounter the brutal reality of Vietnam in a student protest and bombing. They nearly get killed. This may be the only politically relavent part of the film. After the 1989 Beijing massecre, any Chinese could recognize the image of a student protester standing in front of an army tank. However, it was never the focus of the film.
They are soon involved in local gangsters' activity and meet Luke, a hired gunman of Chinese-French origin played by Simon Yam. It is never clearly explained why Luke becomes an ally with Ben and co., except that Ben joins his attempt to rescue his lover, a singer fallen to prostitution, from the powerful local gangsters. A long and exhausting gun battle follows. This part of the film feels very much awkward and detached from the rest of it. It may be part of the original idea Woo developed with ex-colleague and ex-pal Tsui Hark, since Tsui's own version "A Better Tomorrow 3" has similar elements. Woo might have been hestitant to give up this idea, but it does not work within the context of the film, which later grows far beyond this type of genre films. The brief romantic interaction also displays Woo's inability to present interesting and convincing female roles.
On the way of escape, the singer dies and more horrible things happen. From here the film turns completely upside down to something extremely disturbing and bleak. Ben, Frank and Paul are captured by North Viet army and tortured when mistaken as CIA spies. In one of the most horrid scenes, they are forced to execute American POW's. When Luke and American troops raid the POW camp and rescue them, Paul shoots the injured Frank in the head so that he can escape with a case of gold alone.
Ben lives, and finally finds Luke in Saigon as well as Frank with a bullet in his head, thanks to his childhood friend Paul. He has not died, but simply gone mad ... Ben puts him out of his misery in a heart-breaking scene. And there isn't much left for him to do but go back to Hong Kong and face up to the now big and powerful Paul.
In a rare case since "A Better Tomorrow" in 1986, Chow Yun-Fat is not involved in Woo's film here. Although this might be originated from Woo's dispute with Tsui Hark, it feels an appropriate artistic decision not to have Chow in this movie, because there is no larger-than-life hero in this film, only a few small-time young men from the bottom struggling hard. Only Simon Yam is the "victim" of Woo's ultra-cool make-over. Tony Leung Chiu Wai, a critically acclaimed dramatic actor, plays the lead character Ben with vulnerability and credibility, gives a convincing realism to the grim and brutal picture. He has a tender side more low-keyed than Chow's heroes. Waise Lee again takes up the evil role for Woo, but his character Paul is weakly written and lacks complexity and smooth transition, more like a neurotic mad dog from early on. I never gave enough credit to Jacky Cheung, who started out as a singer in Hong Kong. He first surprised me in Tsui Hark's "Wong Fei-Hung." (Once upon a Time in China) Here he gives a very convincing and adequate performance as the childish, good-natured Frank. He may have overacted a bit here and there, but the POW camp part and madness scenes are memorable, to say the least.
The portrait of Hong Kong in the late 60s to early 70s clearly carries a sentiment on the director's part, as an era that is long gone and his youth that is long lost, a past he spent in the slum like the characters in this film, struggling upward in a seemingly hopeless situation. The frustration for a grim fate is so real, the tenderness in shots of the poor neighborhood is so genuine, that no doubt there has to be some autobiographical elements. Such a semtiment has also prevented Woo from neater and tighter editing, I suspect. (He also did the editing.) The film could have been done better, but it requires certain emotional detachment unavailable to himself.
The theme is the eternal topics of friendship, loyalty, betrayal and revenge. It may seem cheesy and corny sometimes, yet particularly effective and convincing in Ben and Frank's bonding. On the other hand, Luke's motivation to help the three is not so persuasive (unless you're a believer of the "homoerotic undertone" theory that's popular in western critics). Neither is the transformation of Paul.
The dialogues in Bullet in the Head is cut to minimal, barely enough to string the story together. Everything is told by images and actions. Although Woo is never known for writing smooth dialogues, the silence here is extraordinary even comparing to his other works. As if the extreme anguish has muted him, Woo loads the depressing tension upon the audience as the emotionally exhausting sequences go on and on to the unbearable limits.
It is obvious that the film has taken much inspiration from "The Deer Hunters." But it's ultimately not about wars, but about friendships and brotherhood, loyalty and betrayal, memory and pain, and the degradation of humanity. It is Woo's usual tendency to push emotions to the extremes, drag his characters through hell, and test his beliefs and ideals under the most testing conditions, but it is far darker and more devastating than any of his other films. It does not have the energy and uplifting idealism in his other films, but it focuses more on the vulnerability of powerless small people. His films are ruled by heart not brain. I have a really hard time giving "Bullet in the Head" a grade. Objectively, it's a B+, with much genuine conflict and high concept in the second half of the film and an uneven 1st half. But Woo's films are not to be judged objectively, especially this one in which he put too much of himself.
jun
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews