The Big Heat

This film, The Big Heat (Hong Kong, 1988) is outstanding, and it shows exactly what differs these movies from others. This is directed by Johnnie To and Andrew Kam and the story involves a little bunch of police officers (including Waise Lee, the smooth actor from Better Tomorrow and Bullet in the Head) who are on the trail of a criminal league which is also responsible for one of the cops' partner's death. What follows is non-stop action and never before seen cinematic mayhem.

I'm mostly attracted by the apocalyptic tone the film has. In many Hong Kong films from that period, the main theme is that what will happen to Hong Kong in 1997..? It is a subject matter that scares and really concerns people in these films. But the infernal visions of The Big Heat can also be seen universally and as a statement of the whole globe's future and attitudes which destroy it. The apocalyptic element is maintained by the action and gory mayhem, which never actually stops during the film. There are no chances to have a break and be in peace. The whole system is collapsing and everybody has to fight for life all the time or the "stronger will get you."

The action scenes and gun battles are incredible (sorry for using these adjectives so much). When I first saw this, I watched it on VHS tape, dubbed in English and fullscreen, but still that tape was uncut. When I first saw it, the film didn't have any particular effect on me, although one extremely brutal car scene stayed in my mind, but the film as a whole didn't "blow me away" back then. Then I purchased the DVD which is subtitled in English and letterboxed and after that second viewing, I was kicked in the head. This is the case usually with HK movies: they have to be seen many times, before you really can see through them and appreciate them. The Big Heat showed its real face for me during that second time and now I've ranked the film among the most outrageous, fast paced and also savagely violent action films ever. And I think that people with open minds will come to that conclusion too.

If we talk about the violence in HK films, the violent Woo movies are not too hard to take because they are so beautiful and full of more or less mysterious elements (white birds/doves, crushing statues, and so on..) but the violence in Big Heat is very different. It comes pretty close to violence in Ringo Lam's masterful Full Contact which is also pretty savage and not "beautifully" violent and symbolic as John Woo's films. I really love Woo's artistic work too, but the attitudes in his films are very different than Big Heat's.

A local collector has told me that he has tried to show Big Heat to some of his colleagues at work, and no one has managed to sit through it! That really tells something about what are chances for mainstream audiences to understand these kinds of films which DON'T intend to entertain stupid masses.

In its own masterful genre, The Big Heat is a 10 out of 10 points experience and it can be recommended only for fanatics of the challenging Far East cinema.

Tsui Hark produces and Johnnie To directs this classic tale of hard-boiled cops and powerful criminals who might be above the law, but aren't above justice (Hong Kong style).

Waise Lee plays the detective who wants to crack the proverbial 'one last case' before retirement, with Wong Hin-Mung as the rookie with a weak stomach and admirable support from Phillip Kwok and Lo Ging-Wa as the ice-cool action cops with an unspoken respect and affection under the competitive appearance of their relationship. Paul Chu Kong is truly fearsome as the ruthless villain, and Joey Wang is... cute as a chipmunk (sorry, but she really does look like one - she must never have babies with Donnie Yen!).

The film opens with a shocking image of a power drill piercing a hand, in quite convincing detail. It's just a nightmare/metaphor for Waise Lee's nerve condition, but it sets the tone for the film effectively - one of the most violent and cynical films Hong Kong has produced. It's reminiscent in more ways than one of the recent SPL, and the appropriation of the name from Fritz Lang's at-the-time-shocking noir is... appropriate. The film is quite openly influenced by Robocop too, with several moments of violence essentially stolen from Verhoeven's still-shocking work. This is mostly at the start of the film... as it progresses it shifts more towards Hong Kong style gunplay action in the John Woo style, but never gives up on its mission to up the ante for violence. There is some fantastic gunplay in the film, grittier and less stylised than Woo's, but just as 'ballistic'.

The film is just as intense in its narrative and atmosphere as in the action, genuinely 'thrilling' and dark as it sucks you into the characters' situation, making you care for the relatively-good guys and despise the undeniably-bad guys. There's very little 'fluff' or wasted screen time (Tsui Hark's tacked on cameo at the end being the major exception!).

I first saw the film years ago - one of the first DVDs I imported when I joined the digital world, as it happens. I wasn't all that impressed at the time, though the level of violence/gore definitely stuck in my head. After an overdue rewatch on the new/improved HK DVD, Waise Lee is still a terrible actor, even in this (one of his best efforts), but the film is so intense and uncompromising that he can't destroy it. If Chow Yun-Fat had been free (and affordable) there is no doubt in my mind that this would be held up as one of the all-time classics of HK Cinema's 'Golden Age'. My new evaluation is that it comes pretty darn close anyway.

...it's that the Hong Kong police are dangerously incompetent. Also, the tone of this movie is all over the place. In one moment a cop's fiancé is brutally murdered and a few seconds later another cop is running through the streets carrying a bomb like Adam West in The Batman Movie.

This is my second review on this incredible action film, The Big Heat (Hong Kong, 1988) by film makers Andrew Kam and Johnnie To. More detailed review by me can be found by reading user comments on this film or alternatively clicking my IMDb nick and searching there the first review of mine. I feel a need to write more about this film now that I watched the film again tonight.

The atmosphere and tune of the film is so incredibly infernal and non-stop ominous that I'm even more impressed than what I was when I watched this previously, and that is only one proof of the fact that most Hong Kong/Asian films are revealed more and more with each viewing and they cannot be fully understood after first viewing. The cinematography is very convincing and there are couple of scenes involving brightly red smoke and dangerously misty blue which really create an atmosphere of mayhem and violence, which is present whole the time in this movie, and also in World the film depicts collapsing. Blue smoke and atmosphere created by blue is very usual element among greatest Hong Kong thrillers, and most memorable use of that element can be found in finale of Ringo Lam's City on Fire, and also in many films made by Billy Tang, like Red to Kill and Dr. Lamb (which he directed with actor turned director Danny Lee.) The music in The Big Heat is also very effective and adds to the tension very greatly.

The blood and guts carnage and ultra violent action is very graphic and over-the-top to say the least, and will definitely make more squeamish viewer think twice whether or not continue watching the film. One death scene involving a multi level highway is perhaps the most brutal death scene I've seen in any film, and that is really saying something about the power and punch of this unique film, and that "highway scene" is just one pretty brief scene in this film. The shootout at the hospital is very dark and savage and no one is safe from angry bullets, including little children and nurses. The editing is very important element in these action scenes and there's absolutely nothing worth blaming about editing and cinematography in this film. This film is far grittier and bleaker than most John Woo films, and this is pretty close to Ringo Lam's films full of rage. I love also John Woo's films, but they are very different compared to The Big Heat and other rougher rides of Hong Kong mayhem/action cinema.

The Big Heat may have some negative points like unbelievable plot turns and other usual flaws usually found in action films, but it fortunately lacks all the stupid humor elements found irritatingly too often in Hong Kong action films. The Big Heat is serious all the time and tries not to entertain its audience by making it laugh. The plot is again very confusing, but that is another thing that is often present in these films and seems perhaps more confusing seen through Western eyes, but all these little negative things in the film are so easy to forgive since the film as a whole is so full of positive things and cinematic achievements that really make this film among the greatest Eastern action films ever. I think one has to be pretty keen on Hong Kong and Asian cinema in general in order to appreciate The Big Heat as much as I do, and I know many people wouldn't like films like The Big Heat by various reasons, perhaps most notably because it (fortunately) lacks all the efforts to entertain and make feel safe. I love this film very much and in its own genre full of rage, this film ranks among the most powerful and memorable films ever made. 10/10

A fierce and fatalistic Hong Kong policier. As produced by Tsui Hark and co-directed by the great Johnny To, this gore-drenched neo noir is as far removed from a John Woo bullet ballet as possible. Unlike Woo's romantic notions of honor and loyalty in a morally bankrupt world, the vision here is bleaker, more unsparing. There are no beautifully choreographed dances of deaths, no heroic displays of bloodshed and brotherhood. The filmmakers pummel our violence-jaded sensibilities, rubbing our noses in the sundry ways a human being can be physically mangled or emotionally savaged. They're determined to make us feel the pain, and they succeed in spades. This one fricken hurts to watch.

The film is a Hong Kong travel agent's worst nightmare, a portrait of the city as a neon-lit charnel house. The protagonist is a stolid, world-weary police detective (Waise Lee), whose nerve-impaired shooting hand serves as the perfect symbol of this pitiless urban jungle-- it's beyond repair, as out of control as the landscape he inhabits. In a rare star turn, Lee (the memorable villain of Woo's "A Better Tomorrow" and "Bullet in the Head") is coolly persuasive at suggesting bottled torment; he makes reticence seem like a powerful emotion.

The crime story involving the pursuit of a Malaysian drug cartel is routine stuff, as is the inclusion of a clumsy rookie cop assigned as partner to Lee. But Hark and To invest these familiar tropes with a profoundly unsettling despair that gets under your skin and stays there.

The Big Heat doesn't just burn -- it scalds.