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At first glance, Chow Yun-fat is nobody’s idea of an invincible action hero: he looks like he’d be more at home in an office. Yet stick two guns in his hands, get John Woo to point an overcranked camera at him, and he becomes cooler than Jim Morrison. Hard Boiled is filled with dozens of instances of Yun-fat’s character, the spiky cop Tequila, blowing away bad guys. But nothing is as memorable as the opening teahouse shoot-out. Having cornered gangster no. 1 in a storeroom, only to see his partner Swiss cheesed, an enraged Tequila leaps at the baddie, evading gunfire, slides across a table, and – covered in flour - comes to a halt with his gun pointed at the crook’s head. Tequila chews meditatively on a matchstick, before… BLAM! Woo doesn’t show the actual killing, instead preferring to show the splatter of blood hitting Tequila's ghost-white face. Masterful.
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