Movies - Bullet in the Head

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	Movies - Bullet in the Head

Bullet in the Head is a 1990 movie by John Woo.

A radical assault on the senses, Bullet in the Head portrays the distressing escapades of several friends cajoled, through a random act of violence, into sacrificing the idyllic innocence of youth to fanaticism and injustice of the Vietnam war.

Censorship

Woo's original cut of the film ran over three hours long. Golden Princess demanded that Woo cut the film down to a commercially viable length. The original theatrical version still remained massively edited from Woo's final cut. The film exists in many different cuts due to local/market censorship:

The German version, although rated 18, is heavily cut (ca. 30 minutes).

In 1997 the German distributor re-released the film on video as an uncut version.

Tai Seng VHS tape and the original Hong Kong laserdisc runs 120 minutes with many scenes omitted, notably the finale and is missing end credits.

'Made in Hong Kong' VHS from Britain and DVD from Media Asia is the longest version of the film available (legally). It runs 126 minutes. The finale and the end credits are intact.

In 2001, the film was released uncut on DVD in Germany (rated FSK 18). Although the box says it runs 97 mins, it nearly has the full running time of 126 mins (like the UK version) and is only missing the end credits.

The Hong Kong VCD version uses an alternate ending where Tony Leung executes Waise Lee in the board room instead of the shipyard finale.

The 2004 Hong Kong Legends UK DVD features the longest cut of the film, digiatally remastered and features Woo's original ending as a bonus feature. The original ending is taken from a Mandarin VCD master and is of poor quality.

Trivia

John Woo rewrote much of the script to incorporate his reaction to the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Woo has described this project as his equivalent of Apocalypse Now
, as it had the same exhausting and draining effect on him as that film had on Francis Ford Coppola.

Was originally planned to be a prequel to A Better Tomorrow
(film) but a falling out between John Woo and producer Hark Tsui prevented this from happening. Woo reworked the script into what it is today, and Tsui made his own prequel, A Better Tomorrow III.

The cost of the film was around US$3.5 million, the highest budget for a Hong Kong film at the time.

The helicopter footage used in the camp raid was a mixture of stock footage from the Vietnam war, as well as scenes from another Vietnam movie.

The Vietnam exteriors were shot in Thailand, and the interiors were shot in Hong Kong at the Cinema City Studio. It was deemed too expensive to shoot the nightclub shootout in Thailand.

After the breakup with his partnership with Tsui Hark
, John Woo was having trouble finding backing for his films; stories have circulated that Tsui (one of the most powerful men in Hong Kong cinema) said Woo was hard to work with, and this led to his virtual blacklisting. At any rate, Woo financed almost all of the cost of the movie out of his own pocket.

Like Woo's previous film, The Killer (film)
, this did not do well in Hong Kong because audiences didn't like the allusions to the Tiananmen Square massacre during the riot scenes. Woo was deeply affected by the massacre and felt badly that he touched such a raw nerve in people, but at the same time he felt the Chinese people should react and not hide from it.

During the filming of some of the riot sequences, things got so chaotic on the set that John Woo panicked and ran into several shots. Once, he actually ran into an explosion, which caused large cuts on his head.

Simon Yam
actually burnt his face during the POW camp sequence.

Category:1990 films Category:Action films Category:Hong Kong films

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