Hard Boiled (dir. John Woo, 1992). John Woo’s Hard Boiled features some well-choreographed and executed action sequences, but beneath its technical proficiency, there seems to be nothing going on except troublesome moral implications (cf. Dirty Harry). Woo essentially offers another mediocre buddy cop movie with clichéd, overdramatic characters. Woo uses visual flair to substitute for this meager framework, creating bizarre, testosterone-addled, and sometimes hallucinatory shootouts--Seijun Suzuki is the obvious reference--and equally bizarre, overly sentimental dramatic scenes. The fundamental incompatibility of its component parts becomes nearly nauseating by the climactic scene. D-.
2046 (dir. Wong Kar Wai, 2004). An overstuffed and mystifying meditation of memory, longing, and loss, Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 exists at the surreal intersection of spacetime and eros. Like Tarkovsky, Wong finds a philosophical sensitivity intricately woven into human experience. Wong often obscures his subjects as he shoots them, peering around corners or from behind various veils, which gives the film a hazy, half-remembered quality perfectly in keeping with the film’s content and tone. Sometimes 2046 feels divided by its own ambition, though such a heady ambition is hardly a fault; even if the film as a whole doesn’t hold together, its interlocking components are of salient intellectual interest. A-.
