Bullet in the Head

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"Bullet in the Head" is also a single by rock/rap group Rage Against the Machine, taken from their eponymous album.

Bullet in the Head

Directed by	John Woo
Produced by	John Woo
Written by	John Woo
Starring	Tony Leung Jacky Cheung Waise Lee Simon Lam
Music by	James Wong Romeo Diaz
Distributed by	Tai Seng Video Marketing (USA DVD) music byJames Wong Romy Diaz
Release date(s)	08/17/1990 - 08/31/1990 (Hong Kong)
Running time	136 min
Language	Cantonese
Budget	App. $3,500,000
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Bullet in the Head is a 1990 movie by John Woo.

A radical assault on the senses, Bullet in the Head portrays the distressing escapades of several friends cajoled, through a random act of violence, into sacrificing the idyllic innocence of youth to fanaticism and injustice of the Vietnam war. Some critics note the similarities between Woo's Bullet in the Head and Michael Cimino's 1978 Vietnam epic, The Deer Hunter.[1][2][3][4]

1 Censorship
2 Dialogue
3 Box Office
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Censorship

Woo's original cut of the film ran over three hours long. Golden Princess demanded that Woo cut the film down to a commercially viable length. The original theatrical version still remained massively edited from Woo's final cut. The film exists in many different cuts due to local/market censorship.

Here is a list of the scenes that set the different versions apart:

Ben walks through some numbered footprints taped to the dance floor to demonstrate a dance. Approximately 8 seconds.
Ben gives some dance instructions to his students. Approximately 7 seconds.
Ben watches as Frank's mom beats him with shoe. Frank is thrown out by his parents. Approximately 32 seconds.
Extra footage after Ben, and Frank tell Paul that they killed Ringo. The scene wipes to another scene of Ben's wife, Jane, at home alone. Approximately 36 seconds.
After the bomb disposal worker gets injured there are a few extra shots of protesters clashing with police. Approximately 12 seconds.
After a Vietnamese youth is shot in the head the boys ponder what they've just seen. Frank vomits. Approximately 37 seconds.
The camera pans Luke's room. Approximately 16 seconds.
Extra time of Ben watching the riot. Approximately 8 seconds..
Extra shots of demonstration. Approximately 4 seconds.
A protester is beaten bloody. Approximately 2 seconds.
The protester is drug away. Approximately 2 seconds.
People hang on the consulate gate. Approximately 1 second.
Ben saves the Hong Kong singer from a riot. He has a flashback to his wife in Hong Kong and realizes that both places are in great turmoil. Approximately 29 seconds.
After Frank drinks a whole bottle of liquor the boss makes the boys drink a glass of urine each. Approximately 1 minute and 41 seconds.
Once the fire fight breaks out Ben pour a glass of urine out over the bosses head. Approximately 6 seconds.
A quick shot of Paul's foot on top of the metal box of gold. Approximately 1 second.
Paul looks at the gun fight. He grabs the metal box of gold. Approximately 3 seconds.
Shot of car driving towards beach. Driving towards the camera. This is not in the bootleg version. Approximately 3 seconds.
On the beach Paul yells at Luke. Frank yells at Paul. Approximately 43 seconds.
Frank encourages Ben to run faster towards the boat. Approximately 3 seconds.
Extra shots of Ben running towards the boat. Approximately 9 seconds.
When The night club singer's passport falls into the water one of her songs plays. The only difference in this scene is the soundtrack. The Hong Kong version has the subtitles for this song but not the song.
Paul attempts to grab the gold before he jumps off the boat. Approximately 8 seconds.
The solider with the bazooka reloads and fires. Approximately 8 seconds.
Luke has some extra one handed M-16 work. Approximately 7 seconds.
A G.I. attempts to escape from the POW camp and is killed. Approximately 36 seconds.
Soldiers run through a field in search of the POW camp. The actors run towards the camera. This scene is not in the extended bootleg. It is in the Hong Kong version. Approximately 12 seconds.
Paul leaves in a boat after shooting up a small village. Ben is left for dead. He is rescued by some monks, who nurse him back to health. Approximately 2 minutes and four seconds.
After Frank's hit he buys some drugs, shoot them, and returns to his dwelling. Luke and Paul find him. Approximately 1 minute and 50 seconds.
Ben tries to get through to Frank. He explains that they are brothers and they've experienced everything together. Ben talks about the way Frank's parents treated him. Approximately 2 minutes and 34 seconds.
Ben returns to Hong Kong. He walks in a crowd. Tanks and people are all around. This scene is in the Hong Kong version but it is shorter. Approximately 1 minute and 19 seconds.
In the board room Ben grabs Paul and plugs him. This ending is only available on the VCD. All of the other versions of this movie have the car chase ending. This ending was on the original Hong Kong cut of the movie. Ben returns from Vietnam to find his traitorous friend Paul is now a big man. Ben visits Paul in the middle of a board meeting. Paul introduces Ben and they pretend to like each other for a few seconds. Paul tells everyone in the board room that if it wasn't for Ben he would have gotten out of Vietnam. Ben asks Paul why he doesn't give any credit to Frank. Paul fumbles his words for a few seconds and concocts a lie about what happened to Frank. Ben bursts the bubble of deception as he reminds Paul Frank was shot in the back of the head. Ben places Frank's skull on the table and claims he has kept his promise to bring him home. Then Ben pulls out the bullet and shows it to Paul. Ben asks him why he didn't make sure to shoot to kill . At this point Paul gets defensive and rude. Ben forces Paul's head on to the table and he pull out a gun. Paul begins to pound the table frantically with his hands. He is obviously scared. "Don't shoot," he scream at Ben. Ben look at Frank's skull on the counter. He then pulls Paul's jacket over the his head. This is intercut with Paul doing the same thing to Frank earlier in the movie. Ben gets a faraway look in his eyes. He gazes at the skull on the table and has a flashback of Frank getting shot. Ben hears Frank's screams in him mind. Close up of the gun resting on the back of Paul's head. (BANG). Fade to black. Roll credits.
Ben waits for Paul in the parking garage. He gently pats Frank's skull. When Paul appears Ben kills all of Paul's men. Paul drives out of the parking garage and Ben follows. Approximately 1 minute.
The racing cars are intercut with flashbacks of the three friends racing their bikes. Approximately 54 seconds.
Credits Approximately 1 minute and 35 seconds.

The trailer has Ben doing some extra two handed gunning which is not in any available version. Approximately 5 seconds.

Bootleg tape: has every scene except 18, 27, 32, and 36.

VCD: This is the only version that has scene 32.

DVD: It is missing scenes: 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, and 32. The transfer is good. The sound, remixed in Dolby Digital 5.1, is weak on rear speaker activity. There are removable subtitles in various languages, including English. The disc rattles in some players during the copyright warning and the menus. There are no reports of this defect causing player problems.

The German version, although rated 18, is heavily cut (ca. 30 minutes).

In 1997 the German distributor re-released the film on video as an uncut version.

Tai Seng VHS tape and the original Hong Kong laserdisc runs 120 minutes with many scenes omitted, notably the finale and is missing end credits.

'Made in Hong Kong' VHS from Britain and DVD from Media Asia is the longest version of the film available (legally). It runs 126 minutes. The finale and the end credits are intact. It is missing scenes: 1, 2, 14, 15, 20, 21, 25, and 32.

In 2001, the film was released uncut on DVD in Germany (rated FSK 18). Although the box says it runs 97 mins, it nearly has the full running time of 126 mins (like the UK version) and is only missing the end credits.

The 2004 Hong Kong Legends UK DVD features the longest cut of the film, digiatally remastered and features Woo's original ending as a bonus feature. The original ending is taken from a Mandarin VCD master and is of poor quality.

The bootleg version has a different soundtrack than the Hong Kong version. This is very apparent in scene 22. Throughout the movie the soundtrack is slightly different. A good example of this is before the car bombing scene the classic song "It's My Party" can be heard briefly playing on a car stereo. The song can also be heard on the new DVD.

[edit] Dialogue

In many versions of "Bullet In The Head" are missing some of the English translation. For some reason the subtitles just disappear for a few seconds. Here are the lines of dialogue that you missed if you don't speak Cantonese.

Scene 1: The boys sit around a table and they talk about leaving Hong Kong. The subtitles disappear.

Paul: One day I'll come back in a Mercedes.

Frank: What for? Ben: We've got all we need

Cut to the boys racing on bikes.

The boys shout to each other (it's difficult to tell who says the following lines)

Unknown 1: The loser buys diner.

Unknown 2: It's a deal. Unknown 1: You sure you're gonna win? Unknown 2: I know you're gonna lose.

The subtitles kick back in.

Scene 2: Paul and Jane in a field in front of a factory.

Jane: The riots are getting worse. I'm so scared. I don't know what's going to happen.

Ben: Marry me. Jane: But we're broke. Ben: We can still get married. I don't want to worry about the future.

The subtitles kick back in.

[edit] Box Office

In Hong Kong, the film grossed $8,545,123 HKD - a disaster considering that the huge budget.[5] John Woo is quoted in Jeff Yang's book Once Upon a Time in China as saying that Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III was rushed into theatres to beat A Bullet in the Head at the box office.

[edit] Trivia

John Woo rewrote much of the script to incorporate his reaction to the incident in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Woo has described this project as his equivalent of Apocalypse Now, as it had the same exhausting and draining effect on him as that film had on Francis Ford Coppola.

Was originally planned to be a prequel to A Better Tomorrow (film) but a falling out between John Woo and producer Hark Tsui prevented this from happening. Woo reworked the script into what it is today, and Tsui made his own prequel, A Better Tomorrow III.

The cost of the film was around US$3.5 million, the highest budget for a Hong Kong film at the time.

The helicopter footage used in the camp raid was a mixture of stock footage from the Vietnam war, as well as scenes from another Vietnam movie.

The Vietnam exteriors were shot in Thailand, and the interiors were shot in Hong Kong at the Cinema City Studio. It was deemed too expensive to shoot the nightclub shootout in Thailand.

After the breakup with his partnership with Tsui Hark, John Woo was having trouble finding backing for his films; stories have circulated that Tsui (one of the most powerful men in Hong Kong cinema) said Woo was hard to work with, and this led to his virtual blacklisting. At any rate, Woo financed almost all of the cost of the movie out of his own pocket.

Like Woo's previous film, The Killer (film), this did not do well in Hong Kong because audiences didn't like the allusions to the Tiananmen Square massacre during the riot scenes. Woo was deeply affected by the massacre and felt badly that he touched such a raw nerve in people, but at the same time he felt the Chinese people should react and not hide from it.

During the filming of some of the riot sequences, things got so chaotic on the set that John Woo panicked and ran into several shots. Once, he actually ran into an explosion, which caused large cuts on his head.