HARD BOILED (1992)

 As I've probably said here more than once before the 90's were a bleak time for U.S. cinema.  Anything cool that remained from the 70's had been turned into complete shit by the awfulness of the 80's and now we were entering the black hole of a self-aware mocking parody of consciousness which still lingers on today like an old stale fart.  Real horror films were practically non-existent and action movies had become lifeless predictable boring jokes. The only place to find anything remotely different was Asia and directors like John Woo.  It's hard to see looking back now, after he had been co-opted by the Hollywood shit-spewing machine, to remember how fresh his films seemed at the time.  There really wasn't any comparison.  The violence, action and stuntmen willing to risk their lives just to make a scene look good were sorely lacking from most American flicks in this genre at the time.  Compared to some haf-assed jokey movie like DIE HARD this movie seems so much more iconic to me.  Check it out for Chow Yun-Fat as a cool mother-fucker and people eating in restaurants full of birdcages.  If you are gonna watch this though stick with the subtitles since the dubbed version makes this movie seem way too fucking goofy.