Year:  2009
Genre:  Drama, Crime
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Christian Slater, Wes Bentley, Emmanuelle Vaugier
Director:  Jeff Beesley
Run time:  89 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Few Stephen King stories have been successfully adapted into movies.  There are the obvious failures (Maximum Overdrive, It, Tommyknockers, Pet Semetary) and the occasional success (Misery, Shawshank Redemption).  The most remarkable film in the whole Stephen King catalog is Shawshank.  Not only is it a brilliant film, but it was also a commercial success, has staying power, and was based on a short story.  This is amazing because short stories themselves, Stephen King or otherwise, rarely translate into good movies.  (3:10 To Yuma notwithstanding.)

     I knew right away, with Dolan’s Cadillac, that the “short story” curse was a bigger problem than the “Stephen King” curse.  Oh, there are some other serious problems with the movie – Christian Slater as Dolan, a human-trafficking gangster, and Wes Bentley as the man determined to kill him, are both very very bad.  Slater shows how evil his character is by yelling sometimes, and occasionally delivering a really cheesy and verbose speech.  And Bentley just seems to be going through the motions.  Like, he scowls when he sees Dolan, ’cause he hates him, see? 

     But the biggest problem, as I said, is that this movie is based on a short story.  A really neat short story, by the way.  And in that really neat short story there was no character development or in-depth analysis, just a series of events with an ironic and ingenious ending.  This movie also has an ironic and ingenious ending.  Just like the short story.  However, the story goes right there.  This movie has to fill an hour and a half.  Which means we get more of Christian Slater shouting, more of Wes Bentley scowling, a totally unnecessary subplot involving detectives and investigators, and more filler than actual plot.  This really was a good short story.  And I think it would have made a good short film.  Like, 20 minutes tops.  As it stands, it’s an awful feature.

  The Killer (**********10/10)

Year:  1989
Genre:  Action, Crime
Countries:  Hong Kong
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles, or English dubbing
Starring:  Chow Yun-Fat, Sally Yeh, Danny Lee, Kenneth Tsang, Chu Kong, Shing Fui-On
Director:  John Woo
Run time:  110 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The Killer opens in a church with a bunch of candles around Chow Yun-Fat.  Churches and candles will be very familiar to people familiar with the works of legendary Hong Kong director John Woo.  It then moves on to scene after scene of bloody violence, two-gun shootouts, sliding-along-the-floor gun battles and face-to-face gun-to-the-head standoffs, before closing out in a…church…with candles.  And doves.  All great Woo conventions.

     In recent years, those conventions have become cheesy and at times rather painful.  Woo’s Hollywood fare is tired dreck for the most part (a few personal favourites of mine are exceptions…like Face/Off).  But it must be said that the reason he was allowed to make that Hollywood dreck in the first place was that his Hong Kong movies were sensationally good, starting with The Killer.

     The pairing of Woo and Chow Yun-Fat is one of the great partnerships in movie history, like a Hong Kong version of John Ford and John Wayne, or more recently David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen.  Their work together is absolutely sublime.  The Killer delivers on every conceivable level, and Yun-Fat gives one of the finest performances of his career as a conflicted assassin with a strict code of ethics.  (Another convention that would grow to be tiresome in later years.)

     The Killer is not only Woo’s best film, and one of the great action movies of all time, and one of the greatest Hong Kong movies of all time, it’s one of my absolute favourite movies.  Ever.  Every scene works, the action is consistently spectacular, and the heart of the movie never gets overshadowed by the crazy amount of bullets flying around.  This two-disc Ultimate Edition is great, the second disc a must-have for fans and casual observers alike.  The Killer is a cult classic, but deserves better than just “cult” status.  It’s one of the best.

     The Killer ultimate edition comes out as a single DVD, and also in a package with Hard Boiled on March 30th from Alliance Films.

  Hard Boiled (*********9/10)

Year:  1992
Genre:  Action, Crime
Countries:  Hong Kong
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles, or English dubbing
Starring:  Chow Yun-Fat, Bowie Lam, Philip Chan, Tony Leung, Kwan Hoi-Shan, Anthony Wong, Teresa Mo
Director:  John Woo
Run time:  126 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Hard Boiled is not a cinematic masterpiece like The Killer.  But it sure is a lot of fun.  For this follow-up, Woo ratcheted up the action a lot, and that’s saying something considering how many bullets were sprayed in the first movie.  This time, Chow Yun-Fat finds himself on the other side of the law, playing a cop out for justice, in league with an undercover officer.

     There are still some stylistic flairs that distinguish Hard-Boiled, but mostly it’s a Woo shoot-em-up from beginning to end.  The two guns, the gun-to-the-head standoffs, the sliding along the floor and shooting while leaping through windows are all in this movie also, just turned up to eleven.  And then there’s the ludicrous (but highly entertaining) shootout in the hospital to close things out in the maternity ward, babies and everything.

     Hard Boiled is great entertainment, it’s stylish and fun, but it just doesn’t have the heart or the flow of The Killer.  Which isn’t to say it’s not a great movie – it is.  But it deserves its “cult” status, and not much more.