HEROIC BLOODSHED: A TRIBUTE TO JOHN WOO | Offscreen

John Woo was born in Guangzhou, China, in 1946. In the late-1960s he arrived in Hong Kong, where he began to work as an assistant director at Shaw Brothers Studio. Meanwhile, in his spare time, he was absorbing the subversive spirit of films from the French Nouvelle Vague at the cinema; his own filmmaking would be influenced by the likes of Samuel Peckinpah, Jean-Pierre Melville and Akira Kurosawa. From his mid-1980s  breakthrough onwards, he injected fresh blood (often literally) into the action genre. His films are populated by antiheroes who live in the sleazy, bullet-riddled underbelly of modern-day Hong Kong, but who behave according to the    chivalrous codes of wuxia warriors from Chinese genre fiction. 

Woo underpinned hyperkinetic editing, meticulously choreographed stunts and over-the-top action - often in balletic slow motion - with strong emotional ties between his male characters. The results were an enthralling fusion of action and sentiment, and turned the charismatic Chow Yun-Fat into a superstar. Woo's operatic,    ultra-violent "gun fu" films, labelled "heroic bloodshed" by his fans, have left an indelible mark on Hollywood action cinema, influencing everyone from Quentin Tarantino to the creators of The Matrix and John Wick franchises.

Offscreen pays tribute to this innovative Asian filmmaker with a  screening of five newly restored films he made in Hong Kong, including The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992),  alongside a selection of his early Hollywood work, and a lecture by Asian cinema expert Julien Sévéon. 
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A BETTER TOMORROW

17 March 2026 - 21h00 | Cinematek

Shaw Brothers wuxia veteran Ti Lung plays a gangster who finds going straight is harder than expected. After directing so-so comedies and kung-fu films, Woo struck pay dirt with the first of his "Heroic Bloodshed" hits: slo-mo gunplay, balletic carnage, sentimental bromance and, in his breakthrough role, Chow Yun-Fat!
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A BETTER TOMORROW II

18 March 2026 - 19h00 | Cinematek

Woo and his co-writers (including Tsui Hark) devise the daftest possible way of reviving a character who died in the first film, enabling the sequel to reunite Ti Lung, Chow Yun Fat and Leslie Cheung for another round of gun fu, spurting blood and brotherly love as they help a gang boss who has been framed for murder.
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JOHN WOO LECTURE JULIEN SEVEON

19 March 2026 - 19h00 | Cinematek

Julien Sévéon, Asian cinema expert and author of Category III - Sexe, sang et politique à Hong Kong (2008), will be speaking (in French) at Cinematek to accompany our tribute to John Woo's early career in Hong Kong.
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THE KILLER

19 March 2026 - 20h30 | Cinematek

Chow Yun Fat plays a dapper hitman who accidentally blinds a nightclub singer and takes on the proverbial one last job to pay for her cornea transplant while trading meaningful glances and Mexican stand-offs with his cop nemesis. Woo's kinetic high-octane bromance makes Hollywood action films look awfully arthritic.
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HARD BOILED

21 March 2026 - 21h30 | Cinema Nova

Chow Yun Fat and Tony Leung, coolest actors in the world, star in this sublime, insanely violent shoot-em-up. Mind-boggling stuntwork and a body count in the billions reach a climax when ruthless Triad arms smuggler Anthony Wong takes an entire hospital hostage, and Chow has to rescue a roomful of new-born babies.
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BULLET IN THE HEAD

22 March 2026 - 19h00 | Cinematek

Tony Leung plays one of three friends who are forced to flee Hong Kong and try their hand at smuggling contraband into Vietnam. But this is 1967, during the war, so of course things don't go to plan. Woo tips his hat to The Deerhunter and Tiananmen Square in an epic of ultra-violent action and explosive set-pieces.
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HARD TARGET

25 March 2026 - 21h30 | Cinematek

Rich businessmen hunt down homeless war veterans on the streets of New Orleans, and select ex-marine Jean-Claude Van Damme as their latest victim. But they've picked the wrong target! Highlights in Woo's Hollywood debut include thrilling motorbike stunts and the Muscles from Brussels wrestling with a rattlesnake.
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FACE/OFF

28 March 2026 - 21h00 | Cinematek

FBI agent John Travolta swaps faces with Nicolas Cage’s villain so he can locate a bomb. Of course, things go horribly wrong in the ne plus ultra of Woo's Hollywood career: a barking mad sci-fi premise given an awesome action makeover, with two of cinema’s greatest hams getting a kick out of impersonating each other.