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Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo on the making of Manhunt, Hong Kong and Chinese cinema, and budget versus action movies

Director goes back to his ’80s roots in this Chinese/Japanese thriller, with the return of slow-motion gunfights and white doves, and adds new elements including female assassins and filming in Japan

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Masaharu Fukuyama (front) and Zhang Hanyu in a still from Manhunt, directed by John Woo.

John Woo has to take a moment to consider his reasons for making Manhunt, which premiered at the Venice film festival in September. “I just wanted to go back to basics,” he says.

“I got fed up with big budget films. The more budget we have, the more pressure. So it’s a very unhappy thing. When you’ve got so much pressure, all you have to worry about is the numbers. How much [money] is left? So it cuts the freedom and the joy of creation.”

You might say the legendary Hong Kong director is a victim of his own success. After cult action films such as The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992) gave him an international profile, he segued into Hollywood big-budget films such as Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). This was followed by a period making lavish historical epics in China, with the two-parters Red Cliff (2008 and 2009) and The Crossing (2014 and 2015).

Tony Leung and Chow Yun-fat in a still from Hard Boiled (1992), directed by John Woo.
Tony Leung and Chow Yun-fat in a still from Hard Boiled (1992), directed by John Woo.

All of these have left Woo craving the simplicity of his genre-defining ‘gun-fu’ classics from the late-’80s. “It’s easy for me, action, I know how to do it,” he says.

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“But I never know how to deal with big money, the producers. If a producer is a good producer and knows about moviemaking, that’s great. But if you work with a producer who only cares about money, that isn’t good. So you always need to spend a lot of time, to argue, to fight with them, and expend a lot of energy – it’s not good. Making movies is all about happiness, love, hope and joy.”

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