Canny Woo.

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 2000)

What could have been another tiresome superhero-foils-the-villains film becomes subversive deconstruction in the hands of John Woo. By shooting in an audacious, fragmentary, ironic style; by alluding to a number of directors - Leone, Melville, Kubrick etc. - whose metier has been to undermine the ideal of the conventional action hero; by once again (after FACE/OFF) invoking Franju, inserting his famous white birds signifying madness at the precise moment when Ethan 'Colin' Hunt is preparing to save the day; by associating the central triangle with earth, wind and fire, and leaving out water (Robert Towne, remember?), without which we would all die, Woo undermines the film's retrogressive assumptions, giving us a seriously compromised hero. The colours are to die for. Genius.