hatever happened to John Woo? The man created some of the most astounding action movies ever made in the late 80s and early 90s (The Killer and Hard Boiled are undeniable classics). In a time when films were dominated by gunshots, explosions, and one-liners John Woo elevated the action set piece to the level of art. Sure the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis had set the tone for balls to the wall action and carnage in filmmaking, but no one staged action with a level of careful photography and choreography as Woo. His action scenes played like brilliant dance numbers and they almost instantly changed the way action movies are shot.

While his films influenced almost every North American action movie in the 1990s, John Woo never quite found a found a home in Hollywood. His first movie overseas was a forgettable Jean Claude Van Damme with a mullet picture, Hard Target and it was followed by the equally awful Broken Arrow. In 1997 John Woo made the only film of his Hollywood career that was comparable to his early work, Face/Off. The movie was a critical and commercial success, but everything the director has made since then (Mission Impossible 2, Windtalkers, and Paycheck) has been a forgettable Hollywood product. So when it was announced that Woo would return to Hong Kong for his next movie, fans of the director got excited.