More comic book than dime novel, and more comic book than movie, too. And not all that hard-boiled, for that matter. The opening gun battle attains a body count beyond the capacity of all your fingers and toes, and sets up a recurring pattern of marksmanship whereby incredible accuracy alternates with sudden and no less incredible inaccuracy, as convenient. (The two-gun, toothpick-chewing cop never misses when sliding down a stair railing on his back.) Talented without a doubt, energetic, reckless, audacious, barring no holds (especially not slow-motion and freeze-frames), director John Woo periodically will pause amid the chaos in search of moments of deeper feeling -- softer feeling -- but the pauses are too brief or the chaos too vast. He does better at finding moments of high absurdity: a babe-in-arms wee-weeing at just the right time and with just the right aim to extinguish the hero's burning pant leg. With Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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