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How John Woo’s Face/Off, Windtalkers and Paycheck showed his experimental side
We take a look at three of John Woo’s Hollywood movies from the late 1990s and early 2000s and what they meant for the Hong Kong director
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John Woo Yu-sum’s final Hollywood films before he returned to Hong Kong in the mid-2000s were excellent – with one exception.
Here we look at the films made near the end of his first Hollywood adventure.
1. Face/Off (1997)
Woo made his US debut in 1993, but it took the director a couple of films to figure out how to integrate his style with the demands of the Hollywood studio system.
Face/Off, which starred John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, was the first – and only – film in which he succeeded in inserting his unique approach to action in a US film. The result rivals Woo’s Hong Kong classics like The Killer and Hard Boiled.
“For the first time, Woo has successfully incorporated his style into an American film,” this writer wrote in the Post in 1997. “It is a suspenseful work with a slick plot, chock-full of Woo touches.
“Woo gives his fans the best of both worlds. He makes use of the resources that American studios can offer to stage scenes, as well as investing his own visual style in the details.”
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