Your Thursday Regret: John Woo Movies

I have this thing where when I discover something I like - be it an author or band or television show or whatever, any creative sort of thing, really - I am consumed by a desperate need to immediately hoover up every single instance of it known to man. I am almost certain that this quirk goes back at least to my high school years, but for the life of me I can't remember a specific instance of it (Michael Crichton? Maybe?).

The first such instance that I CAN remember is when I "discovered" the films of John Woo. It would have been the summer of 1997 when I saw Face Off, which meant probably... you know, now that I think about it I can't remember where I saw it. Neshaminy hadn't opened yet and neither had the new theatre at Franklin Mills. The last movie I saw at the Orleans was the Star Wars special edition earlier that year, so... fucking hell. The old 10-screener at Franklin Mills, the one like way off to the side of the mall? Maybe? Crap. If we saw Face Off together, let me know if you remember where.

Anyway, the movie.

I watched Face Off on television not too long ago and god DAMN it was awful. I mean we are talking top to bottom just horrifically bad. Laughably bad.

And I used to LOVE this movie.

When I first saw it my reaction essentially boiled down to "slow-motion graphic violence is REALLY FUCKING COOL!" It is with considerable shame that I admit this, but I was entranced by it. They're shooting each other! And they're doing it SLOWLY! Ooooooooooh! How revolutionary! Looking back on it now - they're shooting each other. And they're doing it slowly. Who gives a flying fuck. Oh, and Gina Gershon sucks in everything. Not sure how I missed that the first time around.

When I got back to school that year, though, I made a mission out of tracking down and obtaining copies of John Woo's other films. Understand that back then this was a much more difficult proposition than it is now.

For starters, this was pre-DVD and, as best I can remember, before we had Best Buy in Philadelphia (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that score). Back then all you had was VHS, and in case you don't remember or aren't aware actually BUYING movies on VHS was fantastically difficult. In the jargon of the times and the business, VHS tapes were "priced to rent." It was not believed that there was much of a market for people buying movies on tape except for Disney movies and Star Wars, so if you wanted to buy a movie the day it came out - on VHS, mind you - it would cost you somewhere around $90-100. For one tape. I am not making this up. Then, usually about 6 months later, it would come out "priced to sell" for $15-20, and to get it you had to go to one hideous place: Suncoast Video.

These places were EVIL, and expensive as hell to boot. Plus this was before the days when anyone knew how to use the Internet for, you know, anything remotely useful, so it wasn't like today where even if, for some reason, you wanted to buy something in a physical store you could go on their website and see where the closest location with one in stock was. No, you had to call the store and ask if they had it. And then call another one. And then call another one.

Also, calling Suncoast Videos and talking to clerks who didn't know anything about anything, let alone movies, asking after video tapes - widescreen and subtitled only goddammit! - of obscure imported Chinese movies no one had ever heard of? FUN IN THE SUN, kiddies. Fun in the motherfucking sun.

But still I worked diligently, tracking down my WS/SUB copies of Hard Boiled and The Killer. My copy of A Better Tomorrow was dubbed because, if I recall correctly, there was not an NTSC subtitled version in existence at the time. When it came out on tape I bought my widescreen copy - getting widescreen tapes was actually something of a chore back then - of Face Off. And I watched them. And watched them. And watched them. And watched them. Over and over and FUCKING WELL OVER I watched those movies, spellbound by what I now recognize as ridiculously-choreographed, histrionic gun violence livened up by the occasional halfway-decent performance. My like-minded friends and I - whose names I will not reveal out of concern for their safety - would get together in one guy's room, let's call him... say... "Brian of Medford, NJ" and take massive amounts of Ritalin and watch Face Off and The Killer. Over. And over. And over. And over. AND OVER.

This is what happens when you take Ritalin recreationally. You play Final Fantasy VII for eleven hours straight and you really really WATCH John Woo movies. We would sit there and just stare at them, mouths agape, almost hypnotized. How one can get hypnotized by something paced and edited so frenetically and so very, very loud I do not know, but it can't be good for the brain.

I spent the better part of 3-4 years extolling the virtues of John Woo movies, a period which culminated with the release of Mission Impossible II in 2000, which I recall seeing in Manayunk with my then-girlfriend and sitting there just like I used to when me and my idiot friends were whacked out on Ritalin a few years before, my mouth stuck open, staring at the screen, entranced. I don't remember if she liked it or not, and by then the "I was drunk" excuse doesn't work anymore. It is a sad commentary on my relative maturity that I was so blown away by MISSION IMPOSSIBLE FUCKING II that I can't remember what was going on around me at the time. I actually dragged my father to see it with me (my second viewing) a week later and, looking back, I would like to retroactively apologize to anyone I dragged to a John Woo movie (i.e. my old girlfriend, my father, and some unknown party).

I don't remember when I stopped liking John Woo, but it couldn't have been much after that. Somewhere along the line I just stopped thinking that graphic violence on film was cool, and I honestly couldn't tell you why. The fact that the movies Woo made after that, even by both his standards and mine of the day, were uniformly awful certainly helps. But I look back on that time, realizing that I was practically an evangelist for these movies that I now recognize as twisted abominations of cinema, and I am legitimately ashamed of myself. I am not often wrong, but it is hardly ever that I am THIS wrong about anything.

Though, I have to tell you, after writing this, I find myself wondering how well The Killer holds up...

JLK