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Director John Woo back in action!

May 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Where in hell has John Woo been hiding? It’s been five years since Paycheck and fans of the beloved Hong Kong action director are getting restless.

Hollywood began pitching Woo shortly after the international success of The Killers (1989) made him a cult favorite in the States. Woo, the first Asian filmmaker to direct a mainstream Hollywood film, was sold to Universal execs by none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme who pitched him as “the Martin Scorsese of Asia!”

With Hard Target (1993), his first American film, Woo achieved the impossible by directing a watchable Van Damme movie! Broken Arrow was a stiff, but a follow-up Travolta picture, Face/Off (1997) proved that Woo could handle a blockbuster without compromising too much of his respectability. M:I-2 was an improvement over the DePalma, but not enough that I’d ever watch this Cruise missile again.

Windtalkers, an exceptional WW II action drama , flopped and gave Hollywood its first indication that it was time once again pitch Woo, this time out the door. He had one more attempt at a blockbuster, the agreeable Ben Affleck futuristic yarn Paycheck, before disappearing from the radar.

Over the past five years, several projects were discussed with very little in the way of results. Woo directed an unsold TV series pilot for a remake of Lost in Space, a segment in a French film and — God help us — a video game.

Woo is currently at in Hong Kong work wrapping up a $75 million adaptation of Luo Guanzhong’s popular Chinese novel Red Cliff. The film stars Tony Leung, who replaced Chow Yun-Fat after he dropped out of the film the day principal photography began, and Takeshi Kaneshiro. No release date has yet been set.

The drought appears to be over. It has been announced that upon completion of Red Cliff , Woo will helm the romantic war epic 1949. Based on true events at the end of WWII and the final years of the Chinese Civil War, the film will star Chang Chen and Korea’s Song Hye-kyo. Wang Hui-ling (Lust, Caution) penned the screenplay.

Filming commences in December with a theatrical release scheduled for December 2009 to honor the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

As my KPBS Film Club partner said when I told her of the news, “Woo starts so many projects that never come to light that I’ve grown jaded about such announcements. I just want to see Red Cliff finished.”

If you haven’t seen a John Woo film recently, why not? The man is responsible for some of the best action films of the 80s and The Killer, his version of Melville’s Le Samourai, is a terrific place to start. You can find the rest of the Spanish Lobby card set here.

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