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
Patrick Leung
Janet Chun
Starring Tony Leung
Jacky Cheung
Waise Lee
Simon Yam
Music by James Wong
Romeo Diaz
Distributed by Golden Princess Film Production Co. Ltd.

released = 08/17/1990 - 08/31/1990 (Hong Kong)
Running time 136 min
Country Flag of Hong Kong (1959-1997) Hong Kong
Language Cantonese
Budget App. $3,500,000
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Bullet in the Head (traditional Chinese: 喋血街頭; simplified Chinese: 流血街角) is a 1990 Hong Kong action-drama film co-written, produced and directed 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]

Contents

[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; however, the original theatrical version still remained massively edited from Woo's final cut. As a result, the film exists in many different cuts due to local/market censorship.

[edit] Box Office

In Hong Kong, the film grossed $8,545,123 HKD - a disaster when considering its large 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 Bullet in the Head at the box office.

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • 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 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, 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.
  • Simon Yam actually burnt his face during the POW camp sequence.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bullet in the Head
  2. ^ cityonfire.com | Bullet in the Head
  3. ^ Welcome to www.variedcelluloid.com
  4. ^ Bullet in the Head
  5. ^ Bullet in the Head (1990)

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films directed by John Woo
1970s
Fist to Fist (1973) • The Young Dragons (1974) • The Dragon Tamers (1974) • Princess Chang Ping (1975) • Hand of Death (1975) • Money Crazy (1977) • Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1978) • Hello, Late Homecomers (1978) • Follow the Star (1978)
1980s
From Riches to Rags (1980) • To Hell with the Devil (1981) • Laughing Times (1981) • Plain Jane to the Rescue (1982) • The Time You Need a Friend (1984) • Run Tiger Run (1985) • Heroes Shed No Tears (1986) • A Better Tomorrow (1986) • A Better Tomorrow II (1987) • The Killer (1989) • Tragic Heroes (1989)
1990s
Bullet in the Head (1990) • Once a Thief (1991) • Hard Boiled (1992) • Hard Target (1993) • Broken Arrow (1996) • Once a Thief (1996) • Face/Off (1997) • Blackjack (1998)
2000s
Mission: Impossible II (2000) • Windtalkers (2002) • Paycheck (2003) • All the Invisible Children (2005) • Red Cliff (2008)
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