Have You Seen A John Woo Film Lately?

There's been a lot of talk in the news about the decline in proceeds at the boxoffice within the last couple of years. This is with good reason: the material sucks! For every good movie, there are 5 or 6 terrible ones. At $5-8 a pop, it's no wonder that people are staying away from the silver screen. It's much cheaper to rent the same films on DVD and discover this same release was a complete bomb.

That leads me to the director, John Woo. If you happen to see his name as the director of any movie you might be interested in watching, stay away. Why, you might ask? There are several reasons.

After seeing his 2003 release, Paycheck, I was reminded all over again why his films suck. For one, they are known for dazzling explosions, combined with lots of broken glass, plenty of sparks and ridiculous live-action stunts. That might be fine for some movie-goers. But, if you're interested in an actual story in your film, you probably won't find it. In this particular movie, the main character becomes a science experiment, which involves erasing his memories. Somehow these have a link to the future. Make sense to you? Me neither - even after 2 hours of watching the story unfold. Several times my wife and I looked at each other and said "this is ridiculous!" But, with nothing to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon, we hung in there.

Still the worst specimen of Mr. Woo's film expertise I can think of can be seen in the movie Windtalkers. The story is based on the true story of a small group of Navajo soldiers who were responsible for developing a code based on their language. If you know your history, the Navajo code was impossible to be cracked by the Japanese and Nazi forces in World War II. In the film, the story is lost amid Woo's trademark sparks, "death-defying" stunts and meaningless explosions. It was an incredible story - lost in a terrible movie. Sadly, Windtalkers followed much better movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line and never matched the quality.

But, there are other bad examples of Woo's movie-making acumen. There's the ridiculous Face Off, where Nicholas Cage and John Travolta exchange their faces so they can fit in to their roles in separate worlds. If the idea wasn't bad enough, it emerged again in the movie Mission Impossible II, with the manic Tom Cruise trading faces in that one. Broken Arrow, Hard Target, Once A Thief and Blackjack have the trademark explosions, car crashes, broken glass and physical stunts just like any Woo movie would. They also have the typical 1 or 2 star rating that usually accompanies his movies.

Don't think that John Woo is content to rest on his movie-making laurels. He's scheduled to release more feature films in the near future. In 2006, there are 7 scheduled, of which 1 is currently being filmed and 2 are in production.

So, when you're thinking "that might be a good movie. I might like to see that one..." make sure that the name "John Woo" is nowhere in the movie credits. If it is, I can save you some money... it's probably going to suck!