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John Woo
John Woo Yu-sen SBS (Chinese: 吳宇森; born 22 September 1946) is a Hong Kong film director known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. The recipient of various accolades, including a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing, as well as a Golden Horse Award, an Asia Pacific Screen Award and a Saturn Award, he is regarded as a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema. He is known for his highly chaotic "bullet ballet" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema.
Considered one of the major figures of Hong Kong cinema, Woo has directed several notable action films. He is known for his collaborations with actor Chow Yun-fat in five Hong Kong action films: A Better Tomorrow (1986), which made Chow a box-office superstar in Asia, A Better Tomorrow II (1987), The Killer (1989), Once a Thief (1991), and Hard Boiled (1992). He has also directed martial arts films such as The Dragon Tamers (1975), Hand of Death (1976), and Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979), and action comedies such as Follow the Star (1978), From Riches to Rags (1980), Run, Tiger, Run (1984), and the aforementioned Once a Thief.
Hard Target (1993), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, was his American directorial debut, and the first major Hollywood film directed by a Chinese – and more broadly, Asian – filmmaker. His other Hollywood films include Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). He made his Canadian debut with the action comedy film Once a Thief (1996), which is a remake of Woo's 1991 film of the same name. He continued to be active in Hong Kong cinema, directing films such as the two-part historical epic The Crossing (2014). His first Chinese-language feature since Hard Boiled (1992) was the internationally co-produced Red Cliff (2008-2009), which broke the Chinese box office record previously held by Titanic in mainland China.
Woo is the creator of the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. He is the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions.
Woo was born as Wu Yu-seng (Ng Yu-sum in Cantonese) on 22 September 1946, in Guangzhou, China, amidst the chaotic Chinese Civil War. Due to school age restrictions, his mother changed his birth date to 22 September 1948, which is what remains on his passport. The Woo family, who were Protestant Christians, faced persecution during Mao Zedong's early anti-bourgeois purges after the communist revolution in China, and fled to Hong Kong when he was five.
Impoverished, the Woo family lived in the slums at Shek Kip Mei. His father was a teacher, though rendered unable to work by tuberculosis, and his mother was a manual laborer on construction sites. The family was rendered homeless by the Shek Kip Mei Fire of 1953. Charitable donations from disaster relief efforts enabled the family to relocate; however, violent crime had by then become commonplace in Hong Kong housing projects. At age three he was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Following surgery on his spine, he was unable to walk correctly until eight years old, and as a result his right leg is shorter than his left leg.
His Christian upbringing shows influences in his films. As a young boy, Woo had wanted to be a Christian minister. He later found a passion for movies influenced by the French New Wave especially Jean-Pierre Melville. Woo has said he was shy and had difficulty speaking, but found making movies a way to explore his feelings and thinking and would "use movies as a language".
Woo found respite in Bob Dylan and in American Westerns. He has stated the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made a particular impression on him in his youth: the device of two comrades, each of whom fire pistols from each hand, is a recurrent spectacle later found in his own work.
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John Woo
John Woo Yu-sen SBS (Chinese: 吳宇森; born 22 September 1946) is a Hong Kong film director known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. The recipient of various accolades, including a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing, as well as a Golden Horse Award, an Asia Pacific Screen Award and a Saturn Award, he is regarded as a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema. He is known for his highly chaotic "bullet ballet" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema.
Considered one of the major figures of Hong Kong cinema, Woo has directed several notable action films. He is known for his collaborations with actor Chow Yun-fat in five Hong Kong action films: A Better Tomorrow (1986), which made Chow a box-office superstar in Asia, A Better Tomorrow II (1987), The Killer (1989), Once a Thief (1991), and Hard Boiled (1992). He has also directed martial arts films such as The Dragon Tamers (1975), Hand of Death (1976), and Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979), and action comedies such as Follow the Star (1978), From Riches to Rags (1980), Run, Tiger, Run (1984), and the aforementioned Once a Thief.
Hard Target (1993), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, was his American directorial debut, and the first major Hollywood film directed by a Chinese – and more broadly, Asian – filmmaker. His other Hollywood films include Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). He made his Canadian debut with the action comedy film Once a Thief (1996), which is a remake of Woo's 1991 film of the same name. He continued to be active in Hong Kong cinema, directing films such as the two-part historical epic The Crossing (2014). His first Chinese-language feature since Hard Boiled (1992) was the internationally co-produced Red Cliff (2008-2009), which broke the Chinese box office record previously held by Titanic in mainland China.
Woo is the creator of the comic series Seven Brothers, published by Virgin Comics. He is the founder and chairman of the production company Lion Rock Productions.
Woo was born as Wu Yu-seng (Ng Yu-sum in Cantonese) on 22 September 1946, in Guangzhou, China, amidst the chaotic Chinese Civil War. Due to school age restrictions, his mother changed his birth date to 22 September 1948, which is what remains on his passport. The Woo family, who were Protestant Christians, faced persecution during Mao Zedong's early anti-bourgeois purges after the communist revolution in China, and fled to Hong Kong when he was five.
Impoverished, the Woo family lived in the slums at Shek Kip Mei. His father was a teacher, though rendered unable to work by tuberculosis, and his mother was a manual laborer on construction sites. The family was rendered homeless by the Shek Kip Mei Fire of 1953. Charitable donations from disaster relief efforts enabled the family to relocate; however, violent crime had by then become commonplace in Hong Kong housing projects. At age three he was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Following surgery on his spine, he was unable to walk correctly until eight years old, and as a result his right leg is shorter than his left leg.
His Christian upbringing shows influences in his films. As a young boy, Woo had wanted to be a Christian minister. He later found a passion for movies influenced by the French New Wave especially Jean-Pierre Melville. Woo has said he was shy and had difficulty speaking, but found making movies a way to explore his feelings and thinking and would "use movies as a language".
Woo found respite in Bob Dylan and in American Westerns. He has stated the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made a particular impression on him in his youth: the device of two comrades, each of whom fire pistols from each hand, is a recurrent spectacle later found in his own work.