Transcript of 70mm’s Hard Boiled (1992) Episode.
SLIM Hey, it’s your old pal Slim and this is 70mm, a podcast for film lovers. Every Monday I chat about recently watched movies with my close friend and artist Danny Haas.
DANNY Meanwhile, WALL-E is turning out to be the worst animated film of all time, according this list, we might as well just remove it from the poll, and then banned the people that voted for it.
SLIM And our own spiritual advisor and movie insider, Protolexus.
PROTO You know what, I used to be a big hater of the, “Oh they didn’t reload their guns. This isn’t realistic.” Maybe they’re just not showing it on screen. Like can’t that be — I mean, we never see somebody take a dump in a movie.
SLIM If you’ve been enjoying the show and 90s Action Month, consider leaving a review on Apple podcasts or rating the show on Spotify, as it helps spread the word about the show. Later in this episode, my pick is featured for 90s Action Month: John Woo’s Hard Boiled. Have you ever seen a gunfight take place in a bird cafe? Or have you ever driven a motorcycle into a dummy in the back of a moving van? It’s time for us to live these dreams together… enjoy!
[70mm theme song ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM “The Animated Summer is upon us.” Quote from our Patreon post that Proto, the Movie Insider, eloquently wrote up. We’re announcing next month’s theme already, its August theme — Animaugust.
DANNY I can’t — that doesn’t sound right. [Slim laughs]
SLIM That didn’t pass the smell test during the test run. So we’re still workshopping, but the Animated Summer will do. And Proto cooked this scheme up, you know, he retreats into his like deprivation tank. [Proto laughs] He closes it like a coffin like he’s Dracula. He comes up with these ideas. So Proto, do you want to elaborate on our scheme for the first week of August?
DANNY Oh, no.
PROTO We’ve been talking about it all year of just how we haven’t been doing many animated movies. We haven’t gotten around to him. I think one of us almost picked one. But there’s been a shortage. So we thought why not just do a whole month of it? You know, we could have done another poll where we each pick a theme. But when we were talking about themes, this came up. And we all, I think we all just said, “yes” typed it to our DMs all at the same time. And we knew, we knew this was this was the moment. I mean, what more do you want in August? It’s hot out. You want to just sit down and see some beautiful 2d, maybe 3d animation up on the screen and have a good time. So that’s what we’re going to do!
SLIM So you had put this poll together, so our supporters, our patrons are voting on six movies. We have six options. Whoever wins, whatever movie wins, that’s the movie that’s going to kick off the month.
PROTO Yeah, the six movies for those at home following along: Akira, The Adventures of Tintin, The Lion King, the 90s version, the good one, The Prince of Egypt, Princess Mononoke and from Disney Pixar WALL-E.
DANNY Goodness.
SLIM WALL-E is like holding the Dance Month spot. Remember when I picked Dance Month, you know, there’s a buzz, there’s an electrifying electricity about that theme. It went down the toilet, like a… like a you-know-what, swirling the bowl.
DANNY Ew.
SLIM WALL-E’s at 7%, WALL-E’s pretty much out.
DANNY I mean WALL-E is turning out to be the worst animated film of all time.
SLIM According to our supporters, yeah.
PROTO They hate WALL-E. Who would’ve thought? [Slim laughs]
DANNY Who would’ve thought?
SLIM Is WALL-E over? I don’t understand, WALL-E is over. It’s finished.
DANNY We might as well just remove it from the poll and then banned the people that voted for it. [Slim laughs]
SLIM WALL-E was like my all time favorite movie for years, like not even just animated.
DANNY Oh my gosh!
SLIM Like, favorite movie. I have a Danny — do I have a Danny WALL-E piece in my house?
DANNY Do you?
SLIM I feel like that’s true.
DANNY Have I done WALL-E art?
SLIM Maybe it’s not Danny, maybe it’s another artist, another dear close friend artist. But Lion King essentially is out right now. There is a movie that’s running away with it as of now, voting is open until Tuesday July 19. And in the lead — this could change at any moment — but in the lead is Akira. Do you believe?
DANNY I do.
SLIM Imagine those drums playing during Proto’s synopsis for Akira?
DANNY Oh my gosh.
PROTO The 4K army is going strong for Akira. They want it.
DANNY They want it.
SLIM Danny, what do you think about this poll so far?
DANNY Well, we picked the movies, so I feel good about this poll. I feel like it’s fair and balanced. You know? Akira is a shocker actually. Even though it’s a masterpiece, I am shocked to see it running away with all the votes right now.
SLIM Princess Mononoke, don’t you have — isn’t that like one of your faves? Your head just had a tilt, I thought you were gonna snap your neck when I said Princess Mononoke.
DANNY I mean, yeah, it’s easily one of the bests. This whole list is the best! We made a list of the bests.
SLIM The best of the best.
PROTO Any of these would be great, except for WALL-E, obviously. [Slim & Danny laugh]
SLIM So that voting is open for supporters on our Patreon until Tuesday July 19. Get the vote out, rock the vote, vote or die for Animaugust, the Animated Summer.
DANNY Still don’t like it.
SLIM Stupid. Before we move on, just remember if you want to skip ahead to Hard Boiled, you can use the chapters right now. Let me just read some comments on this Patreon post: “Princess Mononoke, right after its anniversary? Rob Stevens. Is the anniversary that close?
DANNY It just happened.
SLIM I got chills. Guy Incognito commented: “Oh god.” [Danny & Proto laugh]
DANNY He voted for WALL-E. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Let’s see, Logan: “Poor WALL-E, the greatest Pixar movie of all time doesn’t stand a chance.”
PROTO RIP.
SLIM Forrest: “Moses has already had his turn on the pod.” The Prince of Egypt. Prince of Egypt, as of this moment, not in the running. Is the Bible finished? [Danny laughs]
DANNY I can just hear the one star reviews. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Listen, you get us featured on Apple, those one star reviews are coming. I would love to just read a long read and the interview the people that leave one star reviews in iTunes, like what’s in their psyche? What it pushes you —
DANNY We’ll put you on the show.
SLIM What pushes you to say “this podcast is so bad that I need to write a one star review.” [Danny laughs] I would love to know more about the brain of that person. But let’s move on. Last week, we talked about the big meetup. The Greater Philadelphia meetup just for supporters. Your VHS Village card is your entry, you need your supporter card. Your beautiful card that Danny designed to get in. We got some big plans cooked up. We’re going to watch a movie together. Proto might hold court, you know, outside wearing you know his linen gowns, his vegan slippers and just tell us how we should be living from the Movie Insider.
PROTO I’m getting my Lawrence of Arabia cosplay from spirit Halloween. [Danny & Slim laugh] Oh, there it is, taco knew right in chat.
SLIM Taco had it ready. My god. [Slim & Danny laugh] I mean, like I am literally envisioning you wearing that at some point of the night, maybe it’s like what we’re eating and imbibing later that night, and that thing just appears, you come out of the bathroom, you’re wearing it.
PROTO Walking on top of the cars. [Danny & Slim laugh]
SLIM So if you want details, you want to come to the meet up at the end of August, we have all the details pretty much ironed out, but just for supporters right now. Proto, did you watch any movies this week?
PROTO Yeah, I did. I got to watch some movies with the kids. There’s a few good animated movies that came out recently, that are released on streaming. I watched The Bad Guys, which is I don’t know who, who made this movie. But it’s out on Peacock. I was surprised that it was streaming so early. But it’s there, got to sit down with the kiddos and watch it. I gave it three stars. It’s a fun, family movie. I want to say, I wasn’t blown away by it, by anything in it. But it’s a solid watch. I’ve realized I don’t really Sam Rockwell as a voice actor. He plays like the main, he’s the the wolf in it. And I don’t really love him as a voice actor. But it’s a good time.
SLIM Danny was talking about San Diego Comic Con earlier in the pre-show. For people that aren’t patron, we usually have a pre show before the show. And we have like an uncut episode that has a bunch of stuff after, so FYI. But Danny was talking about San Diego Comic Con and I remember when I first started going, maybe like 10 years ago, there was voice actors that had their own setup. And I don’t know, I just feel like that’s like not a thing —
DANNY They still do it. No, no, no.
SLIM I mean like, voice actors generally being picked for animated movies.
DANNY Oh, right. Now it’s all movie stars, yeah.
SLIM It’s just always Sam Rockwell.
DANNY Chris Pratts.
SLIM The Chris Pratts of the world.
PROTO The art of voice acting is being lost, sadly.
DANNY How do we save it?
SLIM Can we save it?
DANNY Is it saveable? [Slim laughs]
SLIM Stupidest line of questioning the history of this show. It’s like we’re on Charlie Rose and we’re asking you the big questions about who’s saving voice acting. [Danny laughs]
PROTO The other one I watched was The Sea Beast, which dropped on Netflix. This kind of came out of nowhere for me. But it was kind of the same deal. It was a good movie, watched it with my kids, gave it three stars, had a fun time. Probably one of the better products that Netflix has put out recently. But it’s a movie about a young girl who joins a sea monster hunting crew. You know, they’re basically like a pirates crew. But they hunt sea monsters in this world. Animation was fantastic, it was a beautiful movie. I love, you know, I love the ocean, love pirates. And if you love that kind of stuff, you really can’t go wrong with this movie.
DANNY Sounds awesome.
SLIM There’s another movie that I want to hear about. It slipped under my radar. I don’t know when this posted. Mandy, 2018, Nick Cage.
PROTO Yeah, this movie, this movie, I had this on my watch list for a long time and I had been waiting, waiting for it. Yeah, so I sat down last night, watched it. This movie’s a trip. I’ll tell you that right now. This guy-what’s this guy’s? This director, Panos Cosmatos. It’s, it’s wild. I really, I tried to like write about it in the review, but it’s hard to, to put into words just like the feeling I was getting that like, there were so many things in this movie that are so well aligned, in terms of creating like a mood, and a vibe and a sense of like, the 80s of like, crazy drugs, a cult, a crazy cult. Maybe witchcraft? I felt like I was getting a witch — there were just so many like vibes happening. And then this guy kind of, this director, his style is just like over the top. But I think it really works. Like I don’t know, would you, Slim, would you describe this as like, like a kind of like an artsy movie?
SLIM Yeah. Oh my god. I mean, remember the scene that jumps out at me like when they first I think there was a scene where like the the occult people like start tripping out where they like kidnap somebody, I have like a vague memory of this one long shot on the like cult leader. And it felt like I was on drugs for the majority of those scenes. The music too, which it’s the same composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who did Arrival, who unfortunately is no longer with us. But the music was out of sight. I had an amazing time watching this too.
PROTO Yeah, I think if you’re into trippy stuff, it’s definitely worth checking. I mean, it is a horror movie. It’s pretty intense. It has Nick Cage doing some scary, scary things.
SLIM Our sweet boy.
PROTO I gave it four stars, I mean, I had quite a ride watching this movie.
SLIM So glad you finally checked that off your list. I meant to point out that we do have some new patrons this week. Fox, Andrew, JBill and Robert all joined at patreon.com/70mm. So they got the deeds about the meetup happening in late August. They get the uncut eps. They get discounts on Danny’s art, and they get episodes that are available in our 70mm vault, only available to supporters. Which by the way, we recorded our Hard Target episode watch along just for interns that’s coming very soon.
DANNY Very soon.
SLIM It’s in the oven. And we also just locked, guaranteed, chosen our next Supporter-only episode. We’ve got big plans.
DANNY Big, big.
SLIM Big.
PROTO A new era.
SLIM Danny, did you watch anything this week?
DANNY No. Let’s move on. [Slim laughs]
SLIM San Diego Comic Con prep.
DANNY Busy. Busy week.
SLIM For Danny. What did I watch? I watched the most talked about movie of 2022. The buzz is electric. The Gray Man on Netflix. [Danny laughs]
DANNY Stupid ass.
SLIM Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, directed by the men who brought you Endgame.
DANNY The Russos?
SLIM And Civil War, yeah, they’re the directors.
DANNY Oh!
SLIM It’s a Netflix jawn, they directed it. One of them wrote the screenplay. Let me just read the synopsis: When the CIA’s most skilled mercenary known as cord Gentry, aka Sierra six accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, he becomes a primary target, and is hunted around the world by a psychopathic former colleague, as Chris Evans. So Chris Evans, he has like this moustache. Hair looks great, though. He plays like a nutcase, you know, agent like James Bond, Gosling is essentially James Bond. But I liked it, three stars. You know, it’s better than Red Notice. Like I have like the stink of Red Notice from Netflix still in my mouth anytime I watch like a Netflix movie. So compared to that, I said in my review, compared to that, this is Citizen Kane for Netflix, like this is unbeatable.
PROTO Is it a, like a very serious movie? Or is it kind of like action, blockbuster, there’s some jokes thrown in?
SLIM There’s definitely action blockbuster with some like slow moments in it. Like there’s so many action set pieces. It’s a big popcorn movie. It’s too long. It’s like two hours. But there’s so many chase scenes, there’s so many car scenes, there’s so many explosions, there’s so many fights. So it’s like, you know, the fights that people loved in Civil War, you know, like, Oh, Captain American Winter Soldier goat out in an elevator, whatever the heck movie that was. There’s like a bunch of that. But with like Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans and other soldiers, so it’s just like, everything they probably wanted to do with like, that type of thing like espionage and all that stuff. But on Netflix and cost $200 million dollars.
DANNY 200 million?!
SLIM It’s the most expensive Netflix movie ever made.
PROTO Inflation.
DANNY Why is it called Gray Man?
SLIM Because he’s off the books. He’s got no —
DANNY He’s not on the NOC list. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Nobody knows anything about him. He’s got no history. He’s the Gray Man. No, he’s a Gray Man. Whatever that means.
PROTO Russo Brothers just making up terms.
SLIM So if you’ve got nothing to do next weekend, on Netflix, and you want an action movie that maybe will make you laugh, that’s The Gray Man.
PROTO What an endorsement. [Slim & Danny laugh]
SLIM That won’t be on a DVD cover anytime soon. One movie that is very hard to track down,, doesn’t exist at least in the States on Blu-ray or 4K is Hard Boiled. 1992, this is my pick for 90s Action Month and wanted to pick a movie with the least amount of whites in it to change it up for our podcast. And I think I did pretty okay. So Hard Boiled, John Woo. We all watched it. [Slim whispers] It’s available on YouTube. Proto, what’s this movie about?
PROTO Chow Yun-Fat plays super cop Tequila when his partner is killed attempting to murder everyone in a birdcage cafe, Tequila vows to kill everyone. Meanwhile, super undercover cop Alan is working undercover with the goal of killing everyone. When Tequila and Alan’s paths cross while murdering, they lock eyes and know that what they must do in a town where every surface is coated in gasoline and every shotgun is filled with explosive rounds, Tequila and Allen must stop the bad guys from killing everyone the only way they know how…. by killing everyone. Hard Boiled.
SLIM Were we ready for Hard Boiled? Were we honestly ready for what transpired?
PROTO I do have written in my notes, that 10 minutes into the movie, I wrote down, “Sweet Jesus, give me strength.” [Danny & Slim laugh]
SLIM Jesus, please! Help us! It’s Hard Boiled! Danny, what’s your backstory with John Woo? Is there one? Do you have any history with whispers of this movie growing up?
DANNY My history with John Woo would only be M:I 2, I believe. And I am a champion of that movie. I love M:I 2. And I think it’s because that was the first Mission: Impossible I saw in theaters. And so that was like my love affair with Mission: Impossible. But John Woo, since then, and before that. I haven’t seen his other stuff. It’s wild to me. I think I’ve seen like Broken Arrow, now I’ve seen Hard Target.
PROTO Face/Off?
DANNY I haven’t seen Face/Off.
SLIM Ohhhhh.
DANNY Only because it just doesn’t interest me. Like I really don’t care about it, it doesn’t do it. I don’t know. I don’t know. So yeah, I don’t really have a history with John Woo, except for the fact that I love Mission: Impossible 2.
SLIM I just had visions of like a Face/Off bonus ep. You know, shock drop.
DANNY We could do it.
SLIM Do you believe?
PROTO M:I 2 was probably the first time that I heard his name as well. I don’t know if that was the first, yeah, maybe it was the first of his that I saw. I don’t think I saw a Face/Off, like when it came out in the 90s. So yeah, M:I2 was probably the first for me as well.
SLIM Pulling up his page on Letterboxd, just track things. I think Face/Off is probably mine as well. I had seen Wind Talkers with Nicolas Cage. Hard Target we talked about before and interns will hear us watch Hard Target together, 90 minute movie. That was a delight for the three of us to watch, it’s coming out soon. Face/Off, I have not seen Blackjack, but he has, you know, a sizable filmography before that. Brian Formo, who I follow on Letterboxd just logged Bullet in the Head with another Tony Leung movie that they did together. “When three close friends escaped from Hong Kong to wartime Saigon to start a criminal life, they all go through a harrowing experience which totally shattered their lives and their friendship forever.” And that’s like a war-drama, thriller-action, so I added that to my watch, just like instantly, it sounds pretty cool.
DANNY I was reading about A Better Tomorrow, which is one of Chow Yun-Fat’s first movies with John Woo. And I guess this is a spoiler. But anyway, so the first one they did, he was like a, like a, like a supporting actor. But he gets killed off in it. But the people loved his character so much that A Better Tomorrow 2 they bring him back as his twin brother. And he’s the main actor in that. Which I was like, God, it’s awesome. I would love to do a double feature of that movie those movies.
SLIM My first note so for new folks. You know, as we’re watching this movie, we’ll write down three things I want to bring up together we’ll go roundtable until we give our rating and honorable mentions. So my first one is about the introduction. And like the main like intro to the film, which is you know that bird cage cafe, whatever the hell that was and then the scene after that. But it was just like, imagine being a studio executive seeing this movie and then making the decision to say like, I want him to do the next Mission: Impossible like that. That idea and that just like feeling must have been insane like if I was a kid and had said watch this like I would have put money down to see Mission: Impossible to like immediately. Like holy cow Tom Cruise in a movie like this like this is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. Like it’s it’s almost like mind boggling to me that it happened and like in Tom Cruise’s career like not like thinking before Mission: Impossible 2 even came out and seeing this could be the product it had to been such a wild thought to people like before it happened.
PROTO Man, this makes me really want to watch Mission: Impossible 2 because I don’t think I’ve seen it in 20 years. So I’m now like having this kind of reference point for John Woo having watched Hard Target this Yeah, I feel like it would give me a fresh eyes to see M:I 2 now?
SLIM I think I saw like M:I1 first so it probably clouded my viewing of like John loose stuff. You know like the slow motion in Mission: Impossible 2, the doves pigeons or whatever. I think I probably just thought this was like weird when I was a kid. Yeah, this is strange what is going on? So I didn’t quite get it back that I don’t think.
DANNY It really is crazy when I was watching there’s so many moments in this film and even seeing clips from other films where I felt like oh, this. This is where this came from. And to think that we got an Mission: Impossible John Woo movie. It’s It’s so wild. There was a shot, I think I have it in my notes where he walks in with the roses in the box. And I’m like, oh, Cameron. Did you just totally gank this for Terminator, like, it’s, it’s crazy. How influential so much of this is.
SLIM He did, so Hard Boiled. And then he had, so he had three American movies after that before he did M:I 2 to kind of like, I guess hone his skills or whatever, but pretty wild.
PROTO Hold on a second though. Al Pacino did the gun with the roses back in Dog Day Afternoon. This was in the 70s.
SLIM Art imitates art.
PROTO Exactly.
DANNY Imitates art.
SLIM Proto, what’s your number one for Hard Boiled?
PROTO My number one is the whiplash I got just from the swings in the tone of this movie. I love the bits with the smooth jazz. The smoke filled rooms. Yeah, they’re they’re clothes, the drip in this is something else. I mean, it’s it’s super 90s. They kind of look ridiculous to me, but I still love it. Yeah, like the suits that they’re wearing the bold colors. But then it just would like swing so far like some of that like the I would say like the white. It seems very cool with the jazz and the slomo. It actually reminded me of to Wong Kar Wai movies that we haven’t covered, which is the Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, which has like some really, really similar scenes like action scenes. But they fit more with the tone, this it just feels like John Woo has those scenes. And then the action stuff is just like, over the top, through the roof, like mind numbingly dumb, just blowing the whole room and everyone up. So it just felt very odd, those kind of moments. And then another moment is that see what like Alan on his boat or whatever, screaming into the void.
SLIM You were, like so when you start posting IG stories of clips to the movies, I knew we could we could be experiencing something special. That’s a rarity for you to hold your phone up to the screen and post that on Instagram.
DANNY Is Chow Yun-Fat the worst fake instrument player in the history of cinema? [Slim laughs]
SLIM I love that the jazz club’s name is Jazz Club.
DANNY I was watching his fingers on the instrument, I don’t remember if it was the clarinet or a sax or whatever, and it was off by every beat of the music that was being played. It was driving me nuts.
SLIM Danny what’s your number one?
DANNY I’m gonna start off strong, okay?
SLIM Start it.
DANNY The hospital scene and more importantly, the two, almost three minute one shot that he does in this scene with Tony and Chow going side by side through the halls. Did you catch that?
SLIM My god.
DANNY I sat up in my chair and I got like 30 seconds and I’m like excuse me, is this a one shot right now? And when they go back to back in the elevator and that opens back up and they keep going I was just put our hands I was just so excited because I I used to hate kind of gimmicky stuff and I feel like one shot stuff gets gimmicky but everything that was happening in the scene was insane like just an insane amount of you know infinity bullets in these guns why had to read about it when there’s not even an elevator the set when it closed they redressed the outside real fast and then open the doors again like what was saying.
SLIM I honestly wondered that when they got on that elevator I wonder he like a trick shot or something that was cool.
DANNY They just redress the set right away right when the doors closed and they reopened the door so they didn’t go anywhere, but it may look like they went down the floor or whatever. Like I couldn’t get over how amazing that scene was.
PROTO I was gonna say, in the hospital scene, I can’t remember a movie where there was killing of like innocent civilians and hostages so outright in the way in this movie, like that scene where they’re all in that one room, and I can’t remember they’re like, going to start to get them out. And then the bad guys come in and they just completely mow down. The men and women who were hostages and you just see them all riddled with bullets. I couldn’t think of a movie that had done that in that way. It was crazy.
SLIM He annihilated them. Even his like number one in command was, like taken aback. Like he, I mean, the the he looked at some philosophies like one guy was like, Holy shit, that we’re going crazy right now. And he tried to like shoot his own boss. Holy smokes. That scene, it’s like an entire act like the entire third act is the hospital scene, like you are physically exhausted by the end of this movie. Like, I’ve actually thought that when that scene started, I was like, oh, we’re wrapping things up here. It’s like 40 minutes of non stop action and death and explosions.
DANNY And babies. The whole baby plot line.
SLIM The whole movie, I was like where is the effing baby that he’s holding? He’s not even wearing that uniform that’s on the poster. He wears these silken wind pants, whatever he was wearing.
PROTO How about him stopping like three times to go check on the babies throughout this crazy scene? [Danny laughs] There’s a scene where he is. He is diving, blowing guys through walls, like everything is exploding. Five seconds later, he like walks into like the NICU, where the woman is with it with a baby. He’s like, Hey, how’s things going in here? It’s like dude, you were just murdering people. And you just decided to jump over to where the the babies are to just check in how everyone’s doing.
SLIM And yeah, the one of the notes that I had in my honorable mentions were the set pieces. So in Hard Target, the finale takes place in this like really cool. warehouse with We call those things. The parade floats from the martial arts, Mardi Gras parade floats are all in there. And this is amazing. Shoot, our things are exploding. birds are flying across. People are writing things and guns are blowing up. And in this one, it’s the hospital. It’s like there’s always paper flying across screen. There’s something across the screen that is just showing chaos. Or they’re running in between, you know, set pieces. I don’t think I’ve experienced that in an American action movie before like, and especially not in the 90s where it’s not some BS CGI thing that potentially gray man has. But this is like legit real it’s three years ago. Am I doing math correctly? It’s like, it’s so hard. That just looks so hard. What they did in their hospital act to me and I was just so exhausted.
PROTO Yeah, there’s so many people jumping through windows. It’s amazing.
SLIM Would you have the wherewithal if you’re in a bad spot to just jump out the window? Like no, this is it. I’m going to jump at this point I’ll be fine. You never know you don’t know what’s going on outside that window. How high up you are my number two, this is also related to hard target. It’s about the guns but how about the one guy having the same gun as lands?
DANNY To the one shot thing? Yeah.
SLIM That was my sit up moment. Where so in hard target lands. Hendrickson has this weird single fire gun and we were making fun of it. And in this movie, the same gun appears so that guy has John Woo thing. But the guns in this movie, like this is a bygone era. Like this is a video game movie. I think someone in our Discord. Sorry, I can’t remember who but someone called it like a Rails, you know, arcade game, where you’re just seeing a movie version. Traynor says it was me, that we can cut recordable. We’ll check that we’ll confirm that. But that’s true. It does feel like one of those arcade games where you’re standing next to your buddy with unlimited ammunition. This is the movie version of that, which is insane.
PROTO You know what, I used to be a big hater of the, “Oh they didn’t reload their guns. This isn’t realistic.” But then, you know, maybe they’re just not showing it on screen. Right? I mean, we never see somebody take a dump in a movie. [Danny & Slim laugh] It’s like, “All these people aren’t taking dumps! This doesn’t make any sense!” You know, it’s like, well maybe they’re not going to show the reloading of the guns. Okay? I came to terms with that. And I think everyone else should too.
SLIM The Movie Insider has spoken about movie dumps and ammunition. Danny, what do you think about the guns and the constant shooting and death?
DANNY It’s funny because I forgot the for the plot of this movie for a bit. I forget that it’s an arms dealers mobs going head to head so every time I see the amount of guns I’m like, Oh yeah, their arms dealers, there’s gonna be boxes of guns hidden everywhere, like that warehouse intro scene where they’re hiding it and cars and all the things so I don’t I don’t know. I enjoyed it. I have I have a good time watching it. Right? It’s ridiculous. I mean, every bullet exploded. It didn’t just like pierce a wall of drywall, it blew it up. There was a great shot to in that warehouse scene. It’s with Tony. And I think Chow had just repelled through the roof. And the camera tracks Tony like jumping through the back seat. And it’s real quick, but it’s really nice. Like there’s a lot of really nice little tracking shots that he does. There’s one in the in the T opening battle where he’s going down the going down the like the Hall of tables, and it’s just all the guys are slowly getting shot as the camera goes by them. It’s really nice. I really liked him.
SLIM Proto, what’s your number two?
PROTO My number two is the the chop shop scene. Which is just insane, as well. So the bad guys Johnny Wong, in the beginning of the movie, he’s he kind of goes to wipe out this triad boss, who Tony’s character Alan is what is working for undercover. So they go raid this chop shop that they have where they have like these guns and stuff, but they they go in and they just destroy everything. You know, I’m thinking if we’re going to try to take over this guy’s warehouse, why not try to preserve some of this like merchant valuables? But yeah, the merchandise like you could turn this for a profit he’s a businessman, but they just go in and destroy everything. And not only you know not I’m not like I was like you didn’t I wasn’t really sure all the time what was going on smoothly. And I love how like Charlie on fats character gets there. And it’s like, it’s like him verse 100. He’s like, I can take the roof goes, goes to town. It’s crazy. It’s like
SLIM Batman in Batman 89 coming through the rally coming through the writers and he just repelled down and again that reminded me of the John Claude scene where he’s writing the float and somehow still alive and wrecking people like there’s no reason why that you should do that or that should work but somehow it does. Where’s the motorcycle scene happened? Is it is it in there. The fate hold IG story that you posted. Oh my God.
DANNY He has the exploding shotgun rounds
PROTO Well my favorite part about that the thing that I found so funny is that you see to kill he rides the motorcycle into like a tractor trailer and just lays into this guy. But then you see a show from the backside where he’s like up against the boxes and there’s clearly a dummy like laying on the arms like in a way that’s impossible. And the motorcycle is just like keeps rubbing into the box an amazing shot.
DANNY I verbally said, “Yo” like when that guy got wrecked by that motorcycle coming through that.
SLIM It’s like the the stunt coordinator had just like threw the dummy like in front of the motors at a time it right where he’s like I’m just gonna throw we’re not gonna prop him up that was the one take.
DANNY It happened so fast.
SLIM Danny, number two?
DANNY I’m going back to the hospital real quick cuz there’s when we get to the point where Chow, tequila is finally holding the baby Chow catches on fire as he gets to the window and he’s trying to get his his his his linen Dockers have caught on fire from the ankle to the to the for wives extra wide boot cut. My name Dockers have been lit a flame and he’s stomped trying to stump me he’s holding a baby in one arm a gun in the other. And all of a sudden, the fire gets put out by what looks like water going down his leg. But the baby pisses on him and puts out the fire on his legs. And I was in awe of this writing. Who thought Out of this, the fact that they did it, he calls it a little pisspot and thanked the baby for putting the fire out in his legs. I was. This is cinema. This is why we go to the movies.
SLIM Where is the cut of Nicole Kidman watching this scene in the AMC do exactly. The the baby stuff is so wild. There’s a scene where they’re rappelling outside trying to take the babies to the to the ground level and get the babies out. And there’s one guy who was rappelling down hallway he gets shot maybe 50 times we drop the baby though he’s getting like eviscerated his body’s going back and forth he’s getting shot and he’s still manages to bring the baby down insane.
PROTO Yeah those snipers on top of the hospital they are just killing anything that moves
DANNY They weren’t missing.
SLIM My number three, let’s see, we talked about the third act the guns going through my honorable mentions real quick. How about when Tony shoots that real cop? stopped me in my tracks. Yeah, that guy who’s working against the bad guys doing his own thing solo and then Tony like accidentally shoots him holy smokes feel terrible. Trying to think if there’s any any of these honorable mentions that’s worth bringing up from a number three but I don’t think so. The stunt that and will the bird Cafe? We should probably just talk about the bird cafe. What what is going on in there take me why would you ever eat in a cafe that just has like birds, potentially bird droppings hovering next to you or above you while you eat or drink? And but besides the point the cover the cover shot of the movie is is in there where He slides down the stairwell meaning on the the hand the what do you
DANNY know? He’s running sliding? Oh, you have to look at it like Bill running. leaning over the rail. It’s so good.
SLIM That was an amazing stunt to kick things.
PROTO Gosh, there’s a lot of sliding in this. There’s I think Tony Leung like rides to gurneys in the hospital. Oh, and then he goes through that he comes out of like the cubicle or whatever that thing is.
SLIM It’s flied out guns ablaze.
DANNY No, how about in the tea house when tequila gets covered in flour, and he puts the gun to the guy’s head and pulled sugar and he’s covered he’s already like covered in white powder. But then the blood splats all over him. What a
SLIM shocker. Cow so that was not fertile. Number three.
PROTO Yeah, I guess all I have is like honorable mentions. Oh, I love the part. So the whole reason the scene happens at the hospital at the end is because they built a fortress under the hospital to hold the guns course. And at one point Johnny Huang He says Turn on the gas they have they rigged up this like you know gas this poisonous gas I guess to kill everyone in the hospital if they needed to do that, which is a wild choice. Johnny Wong is just out of his mind. He’s a sick Oh, I loved Oh, so one thing I thought was really cool was the way they communicated to the police with the with the code in the song. Remember that? So like, I think that was that was Tony Liang’s character would send them on like another cone. Yeah. And then they would be it would be like a tune to a song. And then that would be like the code to have the message or whatever. But those computers in there, man, I just, I just wanted to like sit down at one of those those consoles and just the Kleenex of those keyboard clicky clacks the MS DOS.
SLIM Ms. DOS, I was so huge into MS DOS. Getting that on our like, hacker. Oh my youth Yeah, like you could do anything. Anything you could
PROTO there was some great lines that one of the lines. I love the police chief. He says if you obstruct me again, I will castrate you. Which has lied. And there was one other thing what was the let’s see. Oh, yeah. So the way that when he finds the book that has the gun inside of it.
SLIM Oh my god. What was that there was insane.
PROTO He’s there for like two minutes. He’s like, there’s there’s like an outline of a book around the blood. Of course like this book was picked up and then nothing. I don’t know. But he goes and he immediately finds the book within like two minutes and there’s the gun amazing police work by giant fat amazing.
SLIM My line and my notes was lol he finds the book How
DANNY I could smell the blood.
SLIM Danny, what’s your number three?
DANNY Number three, um, the boat scene is incredible. And also, Tony Gunn or excuse me, Alan getting shot in the back with the shock home but not dying. Yeah, like was it buckshot? Like what was that? It looked like I was like, oh damn, Tony’s out of the movie already. I’m sad because I was really liking his character. But then he’s not dead. He got shot in the back with a shotgun but he’s, it’s just the flesh. I thought he survived but that whole boat fight is nuts. Also living on a boat. In my next life, please.
SLIM God, you just be like Tony, when you actually like Tony. Wide Leg khakis just rush on that ground floor
DANNY Men’s Wearhouse suit.
SLIM The rest of my honorable mentions. But I also had a line yo, he shoots that guy as he’s covered in powder. Gym using the handcuffs as a screwdriver.
DANNY Oh my gosh.
SLIM He just cuts the bottom out of the wall. I don’t even remember that. I don’t even know why I wrote that. sliding off the slabs we mentioned Damn he shoot the real copies dancer nuts. I had a great time watching this. I can totally see being an American executive. Getting like legit excited, like Come over here. Let’s make some things with some American stars. One call out to and my notes. The one woman in this movie and she’s in charge of the babies probably could have made her duel. A few other things. I think she had some cool scenes towards the end.
DANNY Now she gets smacked and then she just viscera, it’s that guy with a pistol.
SLIM Let’s see, four stars for me had a great time. Hard Boiled. So glad we’re able to watch this together. Proto?
PROTO The one other scene that I loved was the eyepatch guy. The assassin Mad Dog. I like how he he just put on the doctor scrubs just to throw the guy down the laundry chute that he takes them off immediately. But yeah, I had fun with this movie as well. I mean, it’s a wild ride. Thank you pretty much I feel like it’s the movie you kind of watch at least once you got to. But yeah, I was kind of conflicted with some of it where I thought I thought some of it like I don’t know, like it felt like pretty corny at times. I mean, the in the story. Isn’t that great? The writing is kind of weird, but you’re not really watching it for that anyway. So I give it three stars.
SLIM Three stars.
DANNY Three stars. Let me check my — oh, when Tony’s character goes in before he kills a gun in the library. He uses a handkerchief to turn the turnstile, but then rubs his finger down every spine of book before he gets to his bluff. I don’t know why that struck me. But I I was like I had to write that handcuffed ranch pisspot Yeah. I had a great time watching this as well. It’s not a five star movie. But it’s definitely a four star movie. Oh, had a great time.
SLIM Hard Boiled in the books. 90s Action Month. We’re so close to hearing Danny’s pick. He’s locked. He’s never been locked harder. Trying to move it than he is right now. These memes of me in my basement. I don’t even know what to say anymore.
PROTO Who is in the you’re not even involved anymore in this. Not even in there.
DANNY I don’t know what I’m looking at.
SLIM Alright, so we have a voicemail. I’m gonna play it you can shoot us one at 70 Mm pod.com. We have links on how to do that.
[voicemail plays]
VOICEMAIL Hey everyone, bude your story and most of us know and while I’ve been pretty busy with work and have a triangle work on my new Live Journal movie blog called the movie outsider. What do you think of it? I think it’s pretty cool, man. Anyway, I’m calling him to let everyone know that I’ll be voting for the Prince of Egypt under no pressure of anybody else. I really think that everyone should vote for that too. There is a specific villager BEX, I think it is who really wants to win and she seems like a pretty cool person. So anyway, thanks for the show Talk soon.
SLIM So that was from quote and being who allegedly has no relation to former producer and guests of our Stranger Things Episode II in alette. I’m doing air quotes allegedly. What do you think the like we have a private village No villagers only that we don’t look at muted forever. What do you think the tone is in there today with this voting situation?
DANNY Has to be insane. Has to be
SLIM do you think backs it backs has a history of learning how to sway the
DANNY violence? She has a history of violence,
SLIM emotional violence in our Discord. Do you think she can do it and sway the vote to Prince of Egypt? Pearl?
PROTO It was done in the before was the movie that was they swayed something. Was it dirty? Was it for no show?
SLIM I think it was Attack of the Clones. Does she sway the vote for interns to
PROTO I think it was Flash Gordon wasn’t it didn’t like something? Or maybe it was twilight? I think Dave might be right. Maybe it was twilight. But this has happened before. So
SLIM it’s happened before? I don’t know if she can do it again. Let me just read only refresh the voting. I just want to see if there’s been any change. Wow. No change.
DANNY Not one change.
SLIM All right. So just a reminder. And um, August, the animated summer for August, the winning movie will kick that month off. And then from there, we’ll pick our own movies. But before we do that, it’s Danny’s pick for 90s action month.
DANNY I know I gave myself this rule of picking movies I’ve been seeing and you guys haven’t seen and it comes to 90s action. We’ve seen a lot of them. Okay, the ones we haven’t seen. We already know they suck. And I’m not going to in this month on a dud. So I’m picking a movie that I’ve given five stars. I’m picking a movie that slim has given four and a half stars picking a movie that proto has not rated or seen allegedly death sentence. So next week we’re going to be covering Heat.
SLIM oh my god oh
DANNY 90s action with a bank.
SLIM Believe it I didn’t even know that was gonna be in the running. Oh my god. We’re gonna steal it. Torquay Amazon.
DANNY He’s already looking for the fourth. Michael Mann’s 1995 He did it. It’s time
SLIM is this the biggest episode in the history of the show?
DANNY Could be Oh, it could be move
SLIM aside Stranger Things episode. 30% off on Amazon right now. 2441 4k UHD Mamma Mia. Amanda, you’re not listening right now. Okay, I
DANNY have really just letterbox 4.2 It’s not
SLIM going to be available before we record though. According to this August 9 is when the 4k drops
DANNY out. We’ll do it twice. We’ll do it back to back
SLIM Redux in all three heat. Listen, the 1080 P looks gorgeous. You know, you know that I know that. We all know it. It’s heat time. It’s time for you.
DANNY It’s time for hate. It’s time for Michael Mann again. Redemption from the ALI episode.
SLIM Oh my god. You talk about Ali. VO where he is? Retire Will Smith Jewish. All right. Another up in the books. We got a lot. We got a lot going on. A lot. We have our next supporter episode planned. We have a date to record it. We haven’t announced anything yet for the next supporter string of eps. We have our intern app that will be released soon of Hard Target and we got animal Animaugust. And also thanks to our friends at Pocket Casts we didn’t forget to call them out who are spotlighting Tapedeck, nice of them to do so. And our friend shows. Proto, any closing thoughts as we get ready emotionally for Heat?
PROTO You know, the thing that maybe shocked me the most is that Hard Boiled came out in 1992. And that hard target was the next year. It’s amazing what a budget can do for you. You know, I mean that’s what I’m assuming. Maybe a big difference in budget. I need to I need to go deeper. Maybe I’ll do a movie insider report this week as to know my the differences between Hard Boiled and Hard Target and really go down to the nitty gritty of of what happened. Where’d his financing go?
DANNY Goodness.
PROTO Probably won’t happen, but we’ll see.
SLIM Just before we go, I just went to Voodoo. There’s a Heat director’s definitive edition. It says UHD, 4.99.
DANNY Oh my.
SLIM Can we get some people on this? It’s on sale for 4.99 right now on Voodoo.
DANNY $500 for a movie.
SLIM And it syncs to our friends at MoviesAnywhere, so you buy it on Voodoo, you can watch it on Prime, you can watch it on Google Play, Apple. The Heat blu-rays usually $5 at Best Buy says Jadakiss. So we have some options. 4K, HDR 10, Dolby Digital Plus 5.1.
DANNY Mamma Mia.
SLIM Next week, we’ll see you then.
[70mm theme song ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
