Bullet in the Head

About halfway throughout the film, I came face to face with the title's implication. A gun is placed to the head of a Vietnamese man and the trigger is pulled. In slow-motion, the side of his head explodes with a gooey mixture of blood and fragmented brain. This is John Woo's Bullet in the Head, a Hong Kong infused action drama that prioritizes on heavy stunt sequences and touches little on various humanitarian themes.

In all honesty, I didn't understand the film's narrative. I knew it involved friends making poor decisions with their lives. But it seemed ultimately repetitive. They got into compromising situations and, minutes later, escaped. I felt there wasn't enough conflict to keep me interested with the stakes at hand. The characters, although trying to share intimate moments, were merely one-dimensional cut-outs with no clear motivations. When I watched this film, I felt like an apathetic studio executive. I only cared for the big explosions and martial arts. Hong Kong films are known to be packed with action and demonstrative of the culture, whether it be the seedy (somewhat fictionalized) underworld of crime syndicates or the bustling corporate work force the city has to offer. Woo touches upon the resistance against British rule in the late 1960s while showing Vietnam deal with American forces. A battle between East and West? If that were the case, it wasn't evident. Maybe Woo is telling his audience that any intervention, whether good or bad, will be met with a response.