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The core of Hong Kong action cinema has always been the eclecticism of its sources. A director like Tsui Hark, for instance, borrows equally from Chinese myth, Japanese cartoons, and Spielbergian effects extravaganzas. John Woo is an exemplar of this tradition: his best movies have been an absolutely preposterous amalgam of French film noir, Douglas Sirk melodrama, spaghetti western machismo, and Sam Peckinpah's ultra-stylized ultra-violence. Yet despite the fact that Woo's cinema comes second hand, it is a dazzlingly original blend which bears the stamp of an original and gifted kinetic artist (in this regard, Woo comes from the pop art tradition of found images which permeates the work of artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol).

Hollywood, of course, will have none of that. It is precisely the qualities that make Woo's movies distinctive that Hollywood has tried to suppress ever since Woo came to America. As a result, both Hard Target and Broken Arrow are completely unremarkable, with only flashes of Woo's brilliance. Somebody must have put the screws to Paramount Pictures when they hired him for Face/Off, because that sombody gave Woo a free hand here, and he cuts loose on all cylinders. This is a renegade action movie which rips itself free from the moribund Hollywood Die-Hard-clone epics which choke theaters every summer. It is as preposterous as any of them--more preposterous, actually--but it doesn't let its premise insult the audience's inteligence like, say, Con Air or The Rock. In point of fact, it is a ferociously intelligent movie that gives its actors their heads without compromising its director's vision, a movie that finds Woo raiding an incredible range of sources: after all, anyone can make "Die-Hard on a battleship" or "High Noon in outer space," but it takes real genius to base an action epic on Bergman's Persona and Franju's Les Yeux Sans Visage.

While all of this is a delight, Face/Off is still the work of the most gifted action choreographer in the world. Intellectual considerations aside, Face/Off is about gunfire and lots of it. Nevermind the face-switching plot. It doesn't matter. Face/Off is a ballistic ballet, a marvel of bodies (and bullets) in motion. And lordy, lordy is it violent. Not the namby pamby cartoon violence of a Schwarzeneggerian epic, either, but full blown slow motion bloodbag bursting shooting women in the gut and letting them roll on the tarmac violence that is refreshingly mean and beautifully filmed, a combination that instills a fascination with violence, a horror of violence, and a meaning to violence that has been absent from popular entertainments of this ilk for a long, long time. Enthusiasts have been saying for years that, given a chance, John Woo blows every other action filmmaker off the screen. Well, guess what: Woo has been given his chance, and do you know what else? He blows every other action filmmaker off the screen. This is more like it.