bulletinthehead

This is the kind of movie that Hong Kong director John Woo used to make before he left for Hollywood to work with unimaginative scripts, and actors who couldn't act their way out of a paper bag , much less pull off passable fight choreography. Bullet in the Head is about three freinds called Ben, Paul , and Frank, in Hong Kong in 1967. The city is in turmoil with rioting, and the three are

constantly in trouble. In one of the first scenes, which reminded me a lot of The Wanderers , they are involved in a huge gangfight. The out of place score here is The Monkees- I'm a Believer which gave the whole scene a pretty lighthearted touch ( Woo must be a Monkees fan, because he also uses the song later in the film). After the chaos of Hong Kong is established, along with the extremely close freindship of Ben, Paul, and Frank, the next scene is Bens wedding. They can't pay the caterers bill, so Frank borrows the money from a local loan shark. On his way to the wedding, Frank gets jumped by a local hood called Ringo. He knows that Frank has money, and tries to rob him. Frank gets away after a harsh beating from Ringo and his gang, and gets the money to the wedding.

After the wedding, Ben and Frank go to find Ringo and even the score. They accidentally kill him, and along with Paul, they escape Hong Kong to avoid prosicution. They get penicillan, and some Rolex's off a local crime boss to smuggle into Vietnam. The crime boss gives them the address of a Eurasian gangster in Saigon in case something goes wrong. Of course they lose the goods that are going to set them up in Vietnam, thanks to a Viet Cong suicide bomber that gets shot near their taxi. They meet up with the Eurasian, Luke. He's become an assassin for hire, and together they plot to extort the nightclub owner that Luke is currently working for. This all leads to an incredibly violent , adrenalin charged shoot-out, and a race through the Vietnamese jungle with gangsters, the Viet Cong, and the North Vietnamese army hot on their heels.

To say much more would be giving too much away. This is probably the best movie ever made about the Vietnam conflict. It was partly inspired by The Deer Hunter, and even has a very powerful concentration camp sequence that surpasses anything the makers of The Deer Hunter were capable of. Hong Kong film is great , because it doesn't play ball with the politically correct brigade. It isn't afraid to show things at their most raw, and dirty, and doesn't care who it offends. That's what filmmaking should be about. Bullet in the Head did have its silly moments, but also had a lot of incredibly realistic scenes, particularly when the South Vietnamese Army caught and executed a suspected bomber. This wasn't your average war film, and unlike most war films, was extremely character driven. I was surprised to see that it wasn't pro-communist given that Hong Kong in 1990 was only a few years away from being handed back to China. This shows that there was definitely a lot of ill will towards communist China in 1990. This is leaps and bounds ahead of Apocalypse Now, and The Deer Hunter , because Woo places as much emphasis on characterisation as he does on breathtaking action sequences. When you watch this, you'll wonder if this is the same man that made Broken Arrow.