Xander ,'Touched'
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That's why I'm pimping the HK noir to you. How'd you feel about Black Cat?
Haven't seen it. I've plowed through a number of crime-family gun-battle melodramas from the late 80s, early 90s, but I have a powerful OTT-o-meter, and have been mostly unsatisfied.
but I have a powerful OTT-o-meter
Mine's probably not as powerful as Nutty's, but I often find myself unwilling to be transported by the magic of melodrama and tragic star-crossed love or whatever that tend to plague most HK dramas. I had to try hard not to guffaw out loud at the end of "House of Flying Daggers" (while rolling my eyes at the lot of them for being such melodramatic queens, like, THREESOME. Look into it.) I think I actually cackled at the end of "The Killer"--or whichever flick that had Chow Yun Fat and the blind girl flailing at each other on snow at the end. But mine is a stodgy type of a soul, I'm afraid.
OMG! The Killer! I have that on an old videotape. Because it's the only HK melodrama I own, it has a special place as "no, really, it's all a huge joke!" pretend-irony.
I mean, there are OTT moments that are total jokes, and then there are ones that nobody who made the movie was in on at the time.
What was the HK movie that had the villians storing arms and explosives in a hospitall? Where the good guys have to show up at the end to save all the babies?
eta: Most OTT HK movie moment that I've seen....
In the Mood for Limbs.
Oh, arms.
Dude, I have seen that one too! At least with that one, John Woo was in on the joke. Or else he really thinks it's okay to split newborn eardrums with close-range automatic weapons fire.
Actually, having seen Broken Arrow, I think that's possible.
Hard Boiled.
I think OTT-ness is a major part of my love for Asian movies. I like it.
I love the scene of the cop or SWAT-like guy rappelling down the side of the hospital while carrying a baby. Dude gets shot, but he still manages to not drop the baby.
What was the HK movie that had the villians storing arms and explosives in a hospitall? Where the good guys have to show up at the end to save all the babies?
HARD BOILED by John Woo with, hey, Chow Yun Fat and Tony Leung. There was enough stuff going on that implied a certain amount of self-awareness on Woo's part in that one, that I figured a lot of the funny stuff was on purpose, whereas THE KILLER seems so damned sincere in its melodrama it's painful in the wrong ways.
Probably x-posted by now.
Yeah, I think The Killer may have been trying to be deliberately OTT, like, they weren't really asking us to take all that stuff seriously, right? I also recall thinking that Chow Yun Fat should really try to get it on with the cute cop instead of the girl, who was like a walking plot-devicey waif. Considering my slash-o-meter sucks ass (and it was pre-fandom, so I didn't even know what slash was that time), the fact that even *I* could see it really means something. I was sure they were gonna start going at it like bunnies right there near the end.