And yet another Hong Kong classic by John Woo. Chow Yun-Fat leads. Here he's done up like an Italian gangster or Nicolas Cage, hair slicked back, smarmy grin, ridiculous melodrama. It's a love story! Except the lady, Sally Yeh, mostly lacks agency and character. Oh well.
The plot has assassin Chow impair Yeh's vision early on, causing him to develop romantic feelings of melioration. What's a damsel in distress to do? After a later job at a dragon boat festival his employer Fui-On Shing decides it's time Chow retired for unconvincing reasons despite the protestations of his old-school agent Kong Chu. Alongside this cop Danny Lee is hot on his tail. They develop a bromance that culminates in an epic shootout in a church. Everything is so over-the-top that I was amazed that the ending could be so overwrought. I found it a fair bit more boring than Hard Boiled for all that.
IMDB trivia. Scorcese-inspired. The harmonica is a nod to Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone. Somehow spine #8 in the Criterion Collection. It's all a bit much. I wonder if anyone considered making one of these where the same actors play both the cop and triad roles.