HARD BOILED—looking for action, big boy? In his last Hong Kong fusillade before shifting to Hollywood, director John Woo’s 1992 ode to firepower has enough gunplay for ten movies, or one decent war. ‘Play’ is apt, since reality lies outside the screenplay. Highly regarded cult shoot’em up is nicked by running on too long—126 minutes worth of mayhem leaves you spent, and checking yourself for glass shards, shell casings and stray pieces of some bad guy’s face—and wounded by the script (blame Gordon Chan and Barry Wong) which is, frankly, terrible. But nearly everything else is flat-out stunning. *

Hard-drinking, sax-playing Hong Kong police inspector (and one-man army) ‘Tequila’ (Chow Yun-fat) and steely undercover cop ‘Alan’ (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), aim to put a dead halt to triad gangster ‘Johnny Wong’ (Anthony Wong) who is flooding the island with guns and seeking to take over all the mobs in town. Tequila is so cool he doesn’t lose his toothpick during melees that would startle Genghis Khan, while Alan, like many movie cops, lives on a boat. He also wants to move to Antarctica. Because it’s quiet.

While the actors are suitably intense, forget the limburger cheesy script, it’s just a profane comic book. Plus the subtitles not only don’t help, they’re hard to follow given what’s going on behind them, so this is one instance we recommend ditching them for the English dubbing. That way you can concentrate on the incredible action sequences, designed, executed and edited with a kinetic fury that drops your jaw even as you experience a twinge of libbish guilt over the escalating wipeouts. Over 100,000 rounds of blank ammo was expelled from the more than 200 guns (imported from England because of Hong Kong’s strict firearm laws), mopping assorted floors with a horde of stunt men working overtime. Absolutely bonkers, backed by a classy jazzy score from Michael Gibbs.

Production tab ran to $4,500,000. Successful at home, it had a select US run (a tiny $72,000), allowing critics to go ballistic and do their usual thing about running down domestic films in comparison to something stylish—if patently ridiculous—from abroad. Word-of-mouth spread thru video releases: we assume surly new-gunslinger-in-town Tarantino nearly exploded ala Scanners. Peckinpah was still alive, but had he not been, Bloody Sam would have spun in his Agua Verde grave. Looking for a shotgun.

With Teresa Mo, Philip Chan (police chief who, naturally, hollers at his men), Philip Kwok (as ‘Mad Dog’, unstoppable killer), Stephen Tung, Kwan Hoi-san, Bowie Lam and hundreds of slow-motion riddled extras. Body count: 307. With a toll like that, this movie falls into the realm of Guy Night: secure buddies and beer, make jokes you wouldn’t want others to hear, and politely suggest to girlfriend or wife that they might want to escape the cave for a few hours so the regression can complete its rehearsal.

* Woo’s self-exile to Hollywood (1993-2008) was flashy but unrewarding–Face/Off his best, the WW2 entry Windtalkers a particular letdown—but his 2008-9 return to China brought the uber-spectacular two-part Red Cliff, a gigantic 5-hour medieval battle epic that had him rack up more casualties than than Mao Tse-Tung.