After making his fair share of comedies and martial arts movies in the late '70s and early '80s, John Woo turned his hand to the modern-day action genre with this explosive war thriller which feels like a Chinese version of APOCALYPSE NOW. Whilst his later genre movies have garnered much fame and respect with worldwide audiences, HEROES SHED NO TEARS seems to be unjustly forgotten. This is unfair, a) because it's Woo's most violent film, and b) because it's a great movie. The plot is straightforward and set up within the opening minutes: a squad of soldiers are enlisted to kidnap and transport a Chinese drug lord over the border to a Chinese prison. Unfortunately their journey is anything but simple as they are pursued by hundreds of the dealer's men, and also get chased by an insane wounded Vietnamese Colonel and his troops who enjoy murdering and raping innocent folk.
What follows is a film of unrelenting action, dished out with intelligence, grace, and style and a long way from the mindless shoot-em-up antics of the Rambo flicks made in America at the same time; although the two kinds of film do look superficially similar, Woo has the Yanks beaten by a clear distance. His fights are expertly choreographed but he still retains strong characters, tight scripting, and holds the excitement throughout instead of just letting things become repetitive. The cast assembled for this film is uniformly good, especially Eddy Ko's hard man hero who must be one of the most beaten and battered leading characters (come the ending) out there. Lam Ching Ying also deserves attention as the unstoppable, one-eyed madman with a vengeance who hunts for Ko and his men. The film is pretty grim and dark throughout, with one notable exception being a hilarious gambling sequence which provides the much-needed laughs.
Although the majority of the action involves large-scale gun battles and explosive weaponry, there's a smattering of kung fu action to appeal to martial arts buffs, especially the savage one-on-one fight between Ko and Ching Ying at the film's finale. HEROES SHED NO TEARS is also an incredibly gory movie, complete with people being impaled, having limbs lopped off, being bloodily shot to pieces, and getting their heads blown open by bullets. The torture scene in which a man's eyes are sewn open is also pretty horrible. The best scene in the film is the attack on the wooden house at around the hour mark, a battle which is incredible, never-ending and beautifully shot. HEROES SHED NO TEARS may not be Woo's best work, but it's up there with the best at least and is a testament to the man's talent. Action movie-making at its most extreme.
What follows is a film of unrelenting action, dished out with intelligence, grace, and style and a long way from the mindless shoot-em-up antics of the Rambo flicks made in America at the same time; although the two kinds of film do look superficially similar, Woo has the Yanks beaten by a clear distance. His fights are expertly choreographed but he still retains strong characters, tight scripting, and holds the excitement throughout instead of just letting things become repetitive. The cast assembled for this film is uniformly good, especially Eddy Ko's hard man hero who must be one of the most beaten and battered leading characters (come the ending) out there. Lam Ching Ying also deserves attention as the unstoppable, one-eyed madman with a vengeance who hunts for Ko and his men. The film is pretty grim and dark throughout, with one notable exception being a hilarious gambling sequence which provides the much-needed laughs.
Although the majority of the action involves large-scale gun battles and explosive weaponry, there's a smattering of kung fu action to appeal to martial arts buffs, especially the savage one-on-one fight between Ko and Ching Ying at the film's finale. HEROES SHED NO TEARS is also an incredibly gory movie, complete with people being impaled, having limbs lopped off, being bloodily shot to pieces, and getting their heads blown open by bullets. The torture scene in which a man's eyes are sewn open is also pretty horrible. The best scene in the film is the attack on the wooden house at around the hour mark, a battle which is incredible, never-ending and beautifully shot. HEROES SHED NO TEARS may not be Woo's best work, but it's up there with the best at least and is a testament to the man's talent. Action movie-making at its most extreme.