DVD: How Hard-Boiled Helped Create a New Brand of American Movie Nerd

John Woo's action classic Hard Boiled makes its Blu-Ray debut this week (in a two-disc "Ultimate Edition" from Dragon Dynasty), and if you weren't around in 1992, it's hard to describe the impact that Hong Kong action cinema had on film nerds of the era.

Since 1992, of course, Woo has gone Hollywood, Jackie Chan makes kiddie movies, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon gave the whole genre an unwelcome whiff of mainstream legitimacy. For movie geeks in the Clinton years, however, the arrival of figures like Woo, Chan, Chow-Yun Fat, Maggie Cheung -- among many others -- on the scene was electrifying. Whether we saw these movies in midnight screenings at cinemas in Asian neighborhoods where none of the posters were in English, or on tracking-laden VHS cassettes, there was something breathtaking about the outrageous stunts, broad comedy, and compelling movie stars on display.

Whether it was Chan somehow simultaneously channeling Bruce Lee and Buster Keaton or Woo reviving the Belmondo/McQueen brand of unironic cool, these movies became heroin for US cinema junkies.

(Super-hardcore cinemaniacs, of course, will claim to have gotten hip to the whole HK thing way earlier -- Quentin Tarantino, for one, certainly made no bones about borrowing heavily from Ringo Lam's 1987 City on Fire when making Reservoir Dogs.)

All of which is to say, Hard-Boiled remains a super-cool shoot-em-up that's been ripped off by countless filmmakers since 1992 -- this sweet new Blu-Ray edition provides the perfect opportunity to see Woo and Chow at their very best.