Bullet in the Head

Infobox Film
name = Bullet in the Head


caption =
director = John Woo
producer = John Woo
writer = John Woo
Patrick Leung
Janet Chun
starring = Tony Leung
Jacky Cheung
Waise Lee
Simon Yam
music = James Wong
Romeo Díaz
cinematography = Wilson Chan
Horace Wong
Ardy Lam
Somchai Kittikun
editing = John Woo
David Wu Dai-Wai
distributor = flagicon|Hong Kong Golden Princess Film Production Co. Ltd.
released = flagicon|Hong Kong|colonial August 17, 1990
runtime = 136 mins.
country = flagicon|Hong Kong|colonial Hong Kong
awards =
language = Cantonese
budget = App. $3,500,000
gross = HK$8,545,123.00
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:132671
imdb_id = 009426

"Bullet in the Head" (zh-ts|t=喋血街頭|s=流血街角) is a 1990 Hong Kong action-drama film co-written, produced and directed by John Woo.

Plot

A radical assault on the senses, "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. Some critics note the similarities between Woo's "Bullet in the Head" and Michael Cimino's 1978 Vietnam epic, "The Deer Hunter". [ [http://www.brns.com/pages4/action78.html Bullet in the Head ] ] [ [http://www.cityonfire.com/hkfilms/ab/bulletinthehead.html cityonfire.com | Bullet in the Head ] ] [ [http://www.variedcelluloid.com/reviews/bulletinthehead/review.shtml Welcome to www.variedcelluloid.com ] ] [ [http://www.hkfilm.net/bith.htm Bullet in the Head ] ]

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 filn.

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.

Box Office

In Hong Kong, the film grossed HK$8,545,123 - a disaster when considering its large budget. [ [http://hkmdb.com/db/movies/view.mhtml?id=7313&display_set=eng Bullet in the Head (1990) ] ] 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.

ee also

* List of Hong Kong films

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0099426|title=Bullet in the Head
*hkmdb title|id=7313|title=Bullet in the Head