John Woo’s Cinematic Trademarks; From Hong Kong to Hollywood

John Woo, Hong Kong's premiere action film director, whose films go through more ammunition than a war, is one of the most influential movie directors to date. By creating a collection of blood-bath action films and non-stop ballistic shoot-outs, John Woo Yu-Sen, has turned his name into an international commodity. Raised in a Christian school and watching Western movies for free at the theatre with his mother, Woo’s poverty stricken childhood has influenced his style of violent action cinema. Creating his own unique genre of Hong Kong action cinema, Woo is best known for his action sequences and “gangster” genre. Determined to globalize and show the world different aspects of his native tongue, Woo broadens Chinese culture to the West by bringing in more characteristics than the typical kung fu movie. This essay is concentrated on the early Western influences of Woo’s style and cinematography seen in his local film, The Killer, and how his trademarks are reflected in his later Hollywood creation, Face/Off. By analyzing his local and Western films, one can note John Woo’s consistent film-making style and his established trademarks in cinema through globalization.

In 1989, John Woo’s The Killer assisted in redefining Hong Kong cinema by creating the ‘Heroic Bloodshed’ era of action cinema. Directly translated as Bloodshed of Two Heroes, this story follows the professional assassin, Ah Jong, also referred to as Jeffery (Chow Yun-Fat), who incidentally blinds a singer, Jennie (Sally Yeh) during a hit job in a nightclub. Determined to help Jennie, who is nearly blind and in need of a costly surgery, Jeffrey finds himself pursuing one last hit, to enable him to assist her with a corneal transplant. As a top assassin, Fat’s character finds himself being pursued by cop, Eagle Lee, who is as determined as Jeffery is in achieving a mission. Alongside this sub-genre of Heroic Bloodshed practiced in Hong Kong are his big-budget blockbuster films in Hollywood. Reflecting similar directing styles and techniques over to the West, Woo is consistent with his thematic blood operas overseas, seen in films such as Face/Off, starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Praised as Woo's first Hollywood film accredited by audiences and critics, this story of a terrorist Castor Troy and FBI agent Sean Archer exemplifies the gun fu action sequenced film Woo is most credited for.

In the late 1980’s, editor Rick Baker of the magazine Eastern Heroes coined the term, ‘Heroic Bloodshed’, created in reference to John Woo’s style of film directing. Referring to a genre of Hong Kong action cinema, ‘Heroic Bloodshed’, also acknowledged as Hong Kong Blood Opera (HKBO), revolves about stylized action sequences and dramatic themes of violence. Before this time, there were only two primary genres of Hong Kong Cinema: martial arts and comedy film. At this time, gunplay was considered boring and ungraceful in comparison to the swift and elegant swordplay of the wu shu epics (Leong 2). Merging American gangster tales of the Western Hollywood culture with the transformed swordplay into gun play of traditional Chinese opera, John Woo’s films are a cultural blend of cinematic styles (Kehr 2). Woo found a new way to present gunplay in a skillful and acrobatic manner that graced traditional martial arts. Creating this one of a kind intimacy in gunplay, he is famous for his Chinese stand-offs where the protagonist and antagonist of the storyline meet face to face. This tool is seen throughout confrontations of Jeffrey and the investigative cop in The Killer; in addition to the two diametrically opposed characters, Sean Archer and Castor Troy, in Face/Off.

Gracefully choreographing his action sequences, John Woo’s films are filled with flying bullets, explosions, and falling bodies. All edited to be viewed in slow motion, Woo’s cinematography skills create suspense and stress a moment in time. Woo’s trademark shoot-outs have an invariable sense of orchestral movement (Sandell 1). His signature slow motion amplification of violence and dramatization of movements such as the doves in his church scenes and the dawdling motion of shattered glass, can be spotted throughout his films (Marshall 15). Ballistic shoot-outs are another key trademark of John Woo, where this ubiquitous motion of overcranking takes place. Integrated throughout both films, Woo centers a lot of the focal points of his movies inside church settings. Branded as a trademark of his work, Woo’s camera skills effectively capture the allusive presence of doves that seem to fly off on-screen as a symbol of hope for his characters. In addition, the characters swiftly move in their gun plays like an armed ballet (14). Appearing as a choreographed play, his shoot-em-up scenes look like his two forefront nemesis’s are dancing; ducking and swaying, jumping from bullets and discharging their weapons. Exploiting all the visual techniques obtainable such as tracking shots, dolly-ins and slow motion, Woo creates surrealistic action sequences originally deployed in his Hong Kong film and latter reflected upon in Hollywood.

As a romantic Christian idealist who loves guns and explosions, Woo also intertwines a distinct way of putting beats together in his gun scenes. Analyzing the sound quality of his two films, the firing of ammunition and the drum beats create music of its own. The art of sound effects and music hype up the visual components in his movies (15). Tuning out the background noise, one can notice the different gunshots assigned for the “hero” and the “villain” in The Killer and Face/Off. Being able to recognize the difference in tone of each characters’ weapon allows the audience to determine the gunshots of the characters when they are off-screen. Setting pleasant music in the background is another musical trademark of Woo. In Face/Off Woo plays the music from the view of the Castor Troy’s son, Adam, during the shootout at Dietrich’s apartment. During this ballistic gun battle, the soft sound of “Over the Rainbow” is played, in place of the sound effects of the weaponry. Paralleled in The Killer, he takes advantage of Jennie’s musical talents and overlaps her singing with suspenseful action scenes about to take place at the club.

Hong Kong cinema is known for its dazzling visuals, incredible energy, and its sense of humore and inventive action plots. Specializing in the juxtaposition of corny romantic melodramas blended with hyperbolic violence, John Woo has globalized cinema by taking Western conventions and altering them to suit and fuse together with Asian cultural conventions (Leong 2). Globalizing the corny comedic side action side of Hong Kong cinema with the gangster-tales of Western culture, Woo integrates themes of friendship, loyalty, and honor as an underlying premise within his characters. Early influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville’s menacing characters and Sam Peckinpah’s themes of brotherhood and male bonding, Woo’s films are filled with fallible heroes, strong and colorful villains, and other extreme leading roles (Marshall 5). A typical John Woo movie grasps the visual of a man, dressed in a sleek suit and sunglasses, associated with women, blending in elements of a romantic drama and corny love shots. Then suddenly, the slow motion editing come into play and the music pauses, allowing the protagonist “hero” to draw his guns in each hand, and have hundreds of bullets shot and dead bodies flying in the air.

After globalizing his trademarks and tactical action techniques through cinema, Woo developed a third-person video game available in countries such as North America, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Japan. Played as an attempt to translate the gun ballet aesthetic popularized by Woo, Stranglehold was developed by Midway Games in 2007 for: Windows, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. This interactive media format has been compared as a mixture of Remedy Entertainment’s Max Payne, and Woo’s earlier blockbuster film, Hard Boiled. Tracing Woo’s concepts of lengthy, balletic shootouts, this interactive game throws in the same sounds, weaponry, and novelty factor as a typical John Woo film. Holding similar characteristics to his films, his style of filmmaking has carried over to the gaming world. Comparing Stranglehold to his films such as The Killer and Face/Off it is easily seen how he incorporates his trademark “Mexican standoffs” and bloody action ballets in his game. Globalizing through media by cinema and gaming, Woo’s trademarks and screenplay have certainly impacted entertainment worldwide.

Director John Woo has established himself in Eastern and Western cultures by integrating Chinese and Western ideals as one through globalization. Known as the father of the Heroic Bloodshed drama, Woo’s choreography and pyrotechnics of violent action influenced in his Hong Kong films, later were reflected in the same manner, technically and visually in his Hollywood pictures. In order to enter and leave Hollywood as successful a director as he is in Hong Kong, Woo needed to bring to the West a new kind of male protagonist that combines physical violence and emotional intensity. As usual, Woo's “hero” and “villain” display the finest weaponry, and the sleekest suits; however, the director also shows that the only difference between the hunter and the prey is a badge, represented in "The Killer" and Face/Off (Hanke 1). Creating new types of protagonists that had been intangible to Hollywood directors prior to his era, global cinema has transformed to a more open and culturally hybridized production. Analyzing the films of John Woo, it becomes obvious why he is known for his trademark cinematic camera techniques that are consistently seen throughout his films produced from Hong Kong to across the seas in America.