Main Cast: Jacky Cheung, Waise Lee, Simon Yam, Fennie Yuen
Release Year: 1990
Country: HK
Run Time: 136 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Following up on his 1989 masterpiece The Killer, superstar action director John Woo directs this emotionally wrenching look at three friends waylaid in war-torn Vietnam. Set in 1967, when clashes between leftists protesting British rule and the police were tearing the colony apart, the film opens with Frank (Jacky Cheung Hok-yau) offering the deed to his parents' home as collateral to a loan shark, so that he can pay for his buddy Ben's (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) wedding party. Unfortunately, Frank is ambushed by a thug named Ringo and his associates who make off with the money. Ben and Frank vow revenge and end up accidentally killing the guy. Wanted by both the law and the triads, Frank, Ben, and their pal Paul (Waise Lee Chi-hung) head for Vietnam with a case of fake Rolexes and dreams of making a quick buck. Immediately upon arrival, those dreams are dashed -- their wares are blown up in a tin-can military coup, they are almost shot by the South Vietnamese army, and their passports are seized. Though tempted to throw in the towel, Frank and Ben are convinced by Paul into joining forces with shady hit man named Luke (Simon Yam Tat-wah) to shake down club owner Leong (Lam Chung). The scheme goes horribly wrong, ending with the death of a beautiful drug-addled singer named Sally (Yolinda Yan Chi-sin) and our three heroes accused of being CIA agents in a North Vietnamese POW camp. Later, though, Frank saves Paul's live and get injured in the process, Paul can only think of financial gain and saving his own neck. He shoots Frank in the head when he fears his friend's cries of agony will tip off the Vietcong. Unfortunately, the bullet doesn't kill Frank, leaving him brain damaged, drug-addled, and in chronic pain. After Ben learns of Frank's condition, he confronts Paul who has since returned to Hong Kong to become a prominent businessman. John Woo was originally planning to make this film under the name A Better Tomorrow 3 until Tsui Hark took the franchise away from him, fashioning his own version. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
An exhausting and harrowing study of loyalty, friendship, and greed in the darkest depths of the human soul, Bullet in the Head found Hong Kong action director John Woo helming one of his most personal efforts to date when the film was released in 1990. Inspired by the horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Woo has crafted an almost overwhelmingly violent anti-war film, which also happens to be one of his strongest in regards to his common subjects of brotherhood and betrayal. As three young men who escape Hong Kong in order to make a profit in the chaos of war, Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung, and Waise Lee are all convincingly effective as a trio of recklessly naïve troublemakers forced into unimaginable situations in the black abyss of Vietnam. Their friendship put to the test when greed comes into play, their decisions and reactions offer a much needed dramatic backbone for a film filled with such nonstop graphic violence. Though Woo would later return to the war field (and explore many of the same themes) with the clichéd Windtalkers, that film comes nowhere near to his work here. With images that are just impossible to shake from memory for days after viewing it, Woo's film has drawn frequent comparisons to such American efforts as The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979); and though Bullet in the Head may not be quite as epic in scope, it is no less emotionally devastating in terms of presenting the brutality of war. Released in various truncated forms, viewers are best advised to seek out the definitive 136-minute version in order to experience the film's intended emotional impact. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Bullet in the Head portrays the distressing escapades of several friends cajoled, through a random act of violence, into sacrificing the idyllic innocence of youth to fanaticism and injustice of the Vietnam war
In 1967, on the way to the wedding of a friend, a young man is accosted by a local gang member. Later, the three friends administer justice, in the process of which the gang member is killed, so they leave Hong Kong to avoid the police and the gang. They run black market supplies to Saigon and get embroiled in the war, being arrested as Viet Cong, then later captured by the Viet Cong, and find that their friendship is tested to the limits as they try to escape.
Planning
Bullet in the Head was originally planned to be a prequel to A Better Tomorrow but a falling out between Woo and producer Tsui Hark prevented this from happening. Woo reworked the script into what it is today, and Tsui made his own prequel, A Better Tomorrow III. After the breakup with his partnership with Tsui, Woo was having trouble finding backing for his films; stories have circulated that Tsui (one of the most powerful men in Hong Kong cinema) said Woo was hard to work with, and this led to his virtual blacklisting. At any rate, Woo financed almost all of the cost of the movie out of his own pocket.
Woo rewrote much of the script to incorporate his reaction to the 1989 incident in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Woo has described this project as his equivalent of Apocalypse Now, as it had the same exhausting and draining effect on him as that film had on Francis Ford Coppola. The cost of the film was around US$3.5 million, the highest budget for a Hong Kong film at the time. Like Woo's previous film, The Killer, this film did not do well in Hong Kong because audiences didn't like the allusions to the Tiananmen Square protests during the riot scenes. Woo was deeply affected by the shootings and felt badly that he touched such a raw nerve in people, but at the same time he felt the Chinese people should react and not hide from it.
Production
The Vietnam exteriors were shot in Thailand, and the interiors were shot in Hong Kong at the Cinema City Studio. It was deemed too expensive to shoot the nightclub shootout in Thailand. The helicopter footage used in the camp raid was a mixture of stock footage from the Vietnam War, as well as scenes from another Vietnam film.
During the filming of some of the riot sequences, things got so chaotic on the set that John Woo panicked and ran into several shots. Once, he actually ran into an explosion, which caused large cuts on his head. Simon Yam actually burnt his face during the POW camp sequence.
Reception
Censorship
Woo's original cut of the film ran over three hours long. Golden Princess demanded that Woo cut the film down to a commercially viable length; however, the original theatrical version still remained massively edited from Woo's final cut. As a result, the film exists in many different cuts due to local/market censorship.
The longest version available now is the 2 disc-set edition by Joy Sales runtime:135mins.
The longer 136min version was screened at a festival and was released on a Bootleg VHS.
Box office
In Hong Kong, the film grossed HK$8,545,123 - a disaster when considering its large budget.[1] John Woo is quoted in Jeff Yang's book Once Upon a Time in China as saying that Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III was rushed into theatres to beat Bullet in the Head at the box office.
