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.

Considering my slash-o-meter

You'd have to be actively beaming anti-slash beams 24/7 at yourself to avoid slash in a John Woo movie. Or at least in his HK stuff.

OTT Woo which was so shocking and cool upon first watching: the bad guy shooting people blocking his way on the elevator just to get them out of the way.

Ultimate Asian OTT: Ricky-O. He pulls somebodys guts out and strangles them with their own viscera.

Black Cat is the HK edition of the La Femme Nikita knockoffs. It's more bleak, but still stylish.

I almost stood up and cheered during The Killer when the antagonist/protagonist got so damned intertwined. It was like subtext coming out of the closet, and looking derisively back at the American movies still hiding in the shadows.

But we've had Angel since then, so it's okay.

I wouldn't say the genre doesn't know it's OTT. I think OTT is in the genre. It'd be like wondering if the opera singers knew they were singing so loud.

Ultimate Asian OTT: Ricky-O. He pulls somebodys guts out and strangles them with their own viscera.

I've never seen it, but isn't that just one moment of many in Ricky-O that's ultimate OTT? I know the head smashing (one guy bringing his fists together and making the other guy's head explode ala Scanners) that used by on the Kilborn era Daily Show "Five Questions" segment is from that movie. And wasn't there also something about a giant industrial meat grinder?

I wouldn't say the genre doesn't know it's OTT. I think OTT is in the genre. It'd be like wondering if the opera singers knew they were singing so loud.

This is how I've always felt about it.

ita nails it.