Bullet in the Head

Watch the Trailer Part crime film, part war movie, and part melodrama, Bullet in the Head is John Woo's most ambitious opera of violence. It begins in 1967, when longtime pals Ben (Tony Leung), Frank (Jacky Cheung), and Paul (Waise Lee) accidentally kill a rival gangster. They decide to flee to Vietnam to get rich on the wartime black market but find themselves fully engulfed in the conflict. Their schemes to smuggle gold and run guns fall apart, straining their friendship and leaving them all emotionally and physically scarred. The wartime setting gives Woo license to unleash some of his (literally) most explosive action sequences. The Guardian 's Peter Bradshaw calls it the "action master's deliriously violent . . . spectacular vision of greed and moral collapse. . . . It offers something other than the usual Hollywood perspective; it is a parable of greed comparable to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ." Director: John Woo (Hong Kong). Released: 1990. Length: 136 min. Format: DCP. Language: English, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and French with English subtitles. Image courtesy of GKIDS