108-415: Hard Boiled ( Chinese : 辣手神探 ) is a 1992 Hong Kong action thriller film directed by John Woo from a screenplay by Gordon Chan and Barry Wong based on a story written by Woo. The film stars Chow Yun-fat , Tony Leung Chiu-wai , and Anthony Wong . It follows a police inspector whose investigation of a brutal Triad leader entangles him in the complex world of undercover policing . The film
216-402: A Coca-Cola bottling plant . The hospital scenes took 40 days to shoot. The hospital segment's location was chosen since they wanted to have an atypical location where gangs would hide their weapons. While filming in the hospital, the windows were covered with blast shields to give the appearance of night time, which allowed the crew to film at any time during the day. The cast and crew stayed in
324-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
432-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
540-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
648-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
756-474: A baby-poisoning psychopath was cut. Hard Boiled was released in Hong Kong in 1992 to generally positive audience reception. Though it was not as commercially successful as Woo's A Better Tomorrow , it still did slightly better than The Killer in the domestic box office. Reception from Western critics was much more positive, with many critics and film scholars describing its action scenes as being among
864-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
972-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1080-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1188-523: A film that clearly aspires to it, look like a cheap copy" A review in Newsday gave the film three and a half stars, stating that "Mayhem has never looked better than in John Woo's latest high-caliber cops-and-robbers thriller, even if the plot is a bit slippery" and that John Woo "has blasted the action genre onto a whole new level. His shootouts are a ballet; his firebombings are poetry. And while he lets
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#17327913956191296-499: A long relationship with producer Terence Chang . After casting Teresa Mo , the character of Teresa Chang was greatly re-written. The film's initial story was about Tony Leung 's character being a psychopath who would poison baby food. When Terence Chang was making connections to have Woo make films in the United States, he found people uninterested and disgusted with the theme of babies being poisoned. This halted production for
1404-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1512-470: A month to develop a new story. Screenwriter Barry Wong was brought in to write a new story about Tony Leung's character being an undercover police officer. After writing the first part of the script, Wong went on a vacation Germany, where he died, leaving the script unfinished. Hard Boiled took 123 days to shoot in 1991. Although Woo told his cast that the film would be more gritty and not as stylish as his previous films, Hard Boiled became more stylish as
1620-536: A rival syndicate led by upstart Johnny Wong. Wong, who is looking to usurp the old Triad bosses through his control of the illicit arms trade, is impressed by Alan's skill and attempts to recruit him. Alan reluctantly accepts the offer, and Wong brings Alan to a raid on Hoi's warehouse as an initiation , where many of Hoi's men are killed. Surrounded, Hoi lets Alan kill him to spare his surrendering men, but Alan kills them all anyway to please Wong. Tequila, who has been watching from cover, ambushes and defeats Wong's men, but
1728-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
1836-465: A sequel to Hard Boiled, includes a high definition remastered version of the film on the Blu Ray game disc, but can only be played on a PlayStation 3. Woo said in 2023 that there were not plans for any 4K resolution re-release of Hard Boiled as the who production company has owned it had sold everything to another company and that he had tried to do a release himself, but could not as he does not own
1944-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2052-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
2160-406: A tense duel before ending in a standoff with a group of crippled patients between them. They allow the patients safe passage to leave, but Wong arrives and guns down the patients while trying to kill Alan, who escapes. Enraged, Mad Dog tries to kill Wong, but is gunned down when his pistol runs out of ammunition. Alan and Tequila kill the remaining gangsters and confront Wong, but he detonates bombs in
2268-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
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#17327913956192376-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
2484-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
2592-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
2700-532: Is a police informant . Wong's henchman, Mad Dog, beats Foxy before Alan is ordered to execute him with a shot to the chest, but a cigar lighter Alan placed in Foxy's chest pocket earlier saves his life. Foxy finds Tequila at a jazz bar and informs him that Wong's armory is hidden in a vault beneath a nearby hospital. As Tequila takes Foxy to the hospital, Wong discovers that Foxy is alive and sends Alan to kill him, while also discreetly sending Mad Dog to monitor Alan. At
2808-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
2916-509: Is caught by Alan, who spares him. Tequila confronts Pang, demanding to know if Alan is an undercover cop. Pang refuses to say, but reveals the teahouse friendly fire killing to Tequila and warns him to stay away from the case. Tequila tracks Alan to his sailboat and deduces he is undercover, but they are ambushed by the remnants of Hoi's gang. The pair fight off the attackers and Tequila flees just before Wong arrives, allowing Alan to keep his cover. Wong realizes that one of his lieutenants, Foxy,
3024-456: Is killed. As revenge, Tequila executes the gangster who killed Benny rather than arrest him. He is reprimanded by Chief Superintendent Pang, who needed the executed gangster as a key witness. After a police funeral, Pang burns the personnel file of another smuggler Tequila killed, revealing him to be an undercover cop . Meanwhile, Alan, an assassin working for Triad boss "Uncle" Hoi, murders one of Hoi's subordinates who had double-crossed them for
3132-455: Is no time to change. Armor and accessories include Ops-Core FAST ballistic helmets with attachable night-vision scopes and ear protection, MSA Advantage 1000 CBA-RCA respirators, and Dräger LAR V rebreathers (for tactical diving). Unlike many similar units around the world, most of the SDU officers do not display the word "Police" on their uniforms. The SDU mainly uses firearms manufactured in
3240-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
3348-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
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3456-402: Is required to complete a nine-month training course that includes weapons handling and marksmanship, tactical movement, unarmed combat, breaching, climbing and roping, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, and combat medicine. Applications are open to women officers, with no female officers to date. Between 1974 and 2014, 383 officers had served in the SDU. Prior to 1998,
3564-674: Is revealed to have survived the ordeal. To protect Alan from the Triads, Pang and Tequila destroy Alan's personnel file and declare him dead, allowing him to leave Hong Kong to start a new life. The film was originally developed in 1990. After creating films which focused on the lives of gangsters, director John Woo wanted to make a film that glorified the police instead. Woo admired Clint Eastwood 's and Steve McQueen 's characters from their films Dirty Harry and Bullitt respectively, and wanted to make his own Hong Kong-style Dirty Harry police detective film. While creating this character, Woo
3672-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
3780-407: Is the core of the SDU, further categorized into the assault team and the sniper team. The SDU structure consists of the following as of 2014: The SDU has five Belgian Shepherd dogs. A volunteer for the SDU has to successfully complete an 11-day selection course known as Hell Week which is held annually that has a success rate of only 25%. After successfully completing selection, the applicant
3888-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
3996-450: Is travelling the globe in search of his kidnapped daughter. In 2009 John Woo's production company Lion Rock Entertainment was reported to be developing a film version of the game, to be written by Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
4104-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
4212-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
4320-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
4428-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
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4536-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
4644-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
4752-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
4860-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
4968-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
5076-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
5184-841: The "Flying Tigers" ( Chinese : 飛虎隊 ), is the elite tactical unit of the Hong Kong Police Force tasked with countering terrorist attacks, hostage rescue, underwater search and recovery, and tackling serious crime involving firearms. The SDU is a subdivision of the Police Tactical Unit which is part of 'A' Department (Operations & Support). The SDU is based at the Police Tactical Unit Headquarters in Fanling . The unit celebrated its 50th anniversary in August 2024. In
5292-698: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Special Duties Unit The Special Duties Unit ( SDU ; Chinese : 特別任務連 ), nicknamed
5400-514: The Head , they intended to release it in a cut version on video. Woo prevented this release as he prefers his personal film edits to be the final versions of his films. The most recent Region 1 release of Hard Boiled was from Dragon Dynasty, who released a two disc DVD of the film on 24 July 2007. The collector's edition of the PlayStation 3 version of the video game Stranglehold , that served as
5508-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
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#17327913956195616-649: The MU was renamed to the SDU and became a dedicated full-time unit to deal with terrorist attacks and serious crimes involving firearms. The SDU was established in 1974 by the British Hong Kong Government, taking over MU’s role. The SDU, then consisting of ten odd members, used existing police weaponry and devised their own tactics. In early 1978, the British Special Air Service sent an advisory team to Hong Kong, which
5724-570: The SDU selection course was 10 to 14 days in length with most of the emphasis placed on physical endurance. In 1998, this changed to a basic four-day selection course with more emphasis on mental attributes than physical ones. Those who successfully passed the basic selection course were given a five-week build-up course followed by a week-long advanced selection course. The course concentrated on weapons handling and use, elementary close-quarter battle, camouflage and concealment, physical fitness, observation and commentary, first aid, and map reading. For
5832-664: The United States and Europe, and its latest equipment primarily include the Glock 17 handgun, the HK MP5 submachine gun, and the SIG Sauer SIG516 assault rifle. Shotguns include the Remington 870 and Benelli M1 Super 90 . Snipers rifles used are the Remington 700 , Knight's Armament Company SR-25 , Accuracy International AX308 , CS/LR4 , QBU-203 , Accuracy International AS50 and SIG Sauer SSG 3000 . In 2020,
5940-573: The United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, placed restrictions on the sale of military equipment to Hong Kong following the passing of the national security law . As a consequence, an order of 1000 replacement MPX submachine guns and SIG516 assault rifles for the SDU and other units placed in early 2021 was cancelled by SIG Sauer, and the Hong Kong police will need to source firearms elsewhere for all units, including
6048-622: The aftermath of a hijacking of a Philippine Airlines jet in 1971, the British Hong Kong government decided to raise a police tactical unit within the RHKP. The unit was known as the Marksman Unit ( Chinese : 神枪手队 ). Officers recruited to MU received British training at the time. MU officers were deployed in 1973 in the hijacking of a Thai Airways jet and on 24 May 1974 during an armed robbery incident at Po Sang Bank. In 1974,
6156-412: The armory, setting the hospital ablaze and forcing Tequila to flee with the baby while Alan goes after Wong. As the hospital explodes, Wong drags Alan outside at gunpoint and forces Tequila to humiliate himself. Using this as a distraction, Alan wrestles for Wong's pistol and ends up shooting himself in the chest, surprising Wong enough for Tequila to fatally shoot Wong in the head, before collapsing. Alan
6264-488: The audience response was very positive with people stomping their feet and yelling at the screen. This reception surprised producer Terence Chang who did not expect such a positive reaction. It had a limited US release in June 1993, grossing US$ 71,858. In France, it was released the same month and sold 85,104 tickets. Hard Boiled received a wide release in the United Kingdom on 8 October 1993. A laserdisc edition of Hard Boiled
6372-484: The best director of contemporary action films anywhere." The Philadelphia Inquirer spoke positively about the action scenes, noting the "epic shootouts that bookend Hard-Boiled, John Woo's blood-soaked Hong Kong gangster extravaganza, are wondrously staged, brilliantly photographed tableaux." The Boston Herald proclaimed the film as "arguably Woo's masterpiece, it is an action film to end all action films, an experience so deliriously cinematic it makes True Romance ,
6480-410: The best ever filmed. In 2007, a video game sequel titled Stranglehold was released. In a Hong Kong teahouse , Royal Hong Kong Police inspectors "Tequila" Yuen and Benny Mak surveil a group of gun smugglers while they are making a deal. When a rival gang ambushes the deal, a fierce shootout breaks out; the gangsters are defeated, but several police officers and civilians are wounded and Benny
6588-407: The body count get away from him, he constantly fascinates, through a combination of chaos and an excruciating control over what we're allowed to see." After the film's initial release, critical reception continues to be positive; the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 92%, with an average rating of 7.8 out of 10, based on 71 reviews. The website's "Critic's Consensus" for
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#17327913956196696-421: The crew quickly changed the set props and rigged the explosions and practical effects in time for the next scene to continue. While filming the hospital sequence, Tony Leung was injured when glass fragments went into his eyes, and he was hospitalized before returning after a week-long rest. Woo changed the ending of Hard Boiled after many members of the crew of the film felt that Leung's character should survive at
6804-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
6912-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
7020-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
7128-483: The film at number 70 in their list of "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. In 2023, Stephanie Zacharek of Time put Hard Boiled on a list of the "100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades", stating that Woo's "artistry lies in the way he shapes a sequence for maximum kinetic effect, creating mosaics of sound and action that leave you feeling exhilarated rather than beaten up." Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine gave
7236-472: The film reads, "Boasting impactful action as well as surprising emotional resonance, Hard Boiled is a powerful thriller that hits hard in more ways than one." Film scholar Andy Klein wrote that the film is "almost a distillation of [Woo's] post-1986 work. Even if the plot is full of holes, and the emotional tug isn't quite as strong as in The Killer , the action sequences (nearly the whole movie) are among
7344-408: The film the highest rating of four stars, proclaiming it to be one of Woo's best films. The British film magazine Empire ranked the character of Tequila as 33rd in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll. At the 12th Hong Kong Film Awards , David Wu and John Woo won the award for "Best Film Editing". Tony Leung was nominated for "Best Supporting Male Actor", but he refused the nomination on
7452-493: The film's end. Woo is a fan of jazz music and wanted a jazz-style soundtrack for Hard Boiled . Woo had also previously wanted a singer to perform a jazz song and have Chow Yun-fat's character play saxophone in his previous film The Killer . The producer for The Killer , Tsui Hark , rejected this idea for The Killer , feeling that Hong Kong audiences did not enjoy and understand jazz music. The score heard in Hard Boiled
7560-403: The filming began. The tea house sequence in the film was shot before the script was written. The crew found that the teahouse was going to be torn down and decided to film a scene there. Woo saw the staircase in the teahouse, and thought about a scene where a character would come shooting down gun smugglers while sliding down the banister. The teahouse sequence was shot in around a week's time and
7668-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
7776-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
7884-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
7992-465: The greatest ever filmed". Mark Salisbury of Empire Magazine gave the film four stars out of five, calling it "Infinitely more exciting than a dozen Die Hards , action cinema doesn't come any better than this." Salisbury compared Hard Boiled to Woo's American films, stating that his Hong Kong films are "not as slick as his later films, [ Hard Boiled is] more inventive and stylised and [has] great early performances from Fat and Leung". Empire placed
8100-510: The grounds that he had a leading role in the film. His protest was supported by John Woo and Chow Yun-fat. This later led the Hong Kong Film Awards to change its nomination rules to allow for multiple leading roles from the same film. In 2007, Midway Games released the game Stranglehold . The game's story and storyboards were made in collaboration with John Woo. The game features the character Tequila from Hard Boiled , who
8208-407: The hospital for days, often losing track of time. After long hours of filming in the hospital, the crew became exhausted. This prompted the direction of one of the climax's action scenes, a lengthy shootout through the hospital's halls, to be a five-minute long take , so as to shorten the time needed to film. To complete this, during a brief 20-second scene in the middle of the take inside an elevator,
8316-534: The hospital, Alan confronts Tequila, demanding to know the whereabouts of the vault; while the two are distracted, Mad Dog kills Foxy. Alan and Tequila discover Wong's vault, where they briefly skirmish with Mad Dog. As Pang, officer Teresa Chang, and other inspectors evacuate the hospital, Wong and his men attempt to gain leverage by taking the staff and patients hostage while indiscriminately shooting fleeing patients and responding police officers, irritating Mad Dog with his callousness. Alan and Tequila team up to rescue
8424-640: The hostages and battle Wong's men; meanwhile, Pang evacuates the lobby and takes command at the police perimeter, while Chang and the Special Duties Unit rescue trapped babies from the maternity wing . As they fight their way through the hospital, Alan accidentally shoots a plainclothes officer and is overcome with guilt; Tequila consoles him by sharing his similar experience from the teahouse and encourages him to fight on. The pair eventually confront Mad Dog again. While Tequila leaves to assist Chang and rescue one last baby, Alan and Mad Dog engage in
8532-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
8640-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
8748-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
8856-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
8964-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
9072-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
9180-479: The period 1998–99, 44 officers applied with 14 selected. In a 2024 documentary, Commissioner Raymond Siu said that the SDU "conduct regular exchanges with other counter terrorism teams from around the world". SDU officers deploy in Crye Precision G3 combat dress of various camouflage patterns depending on the environment. Officers may also deploy in plain clothes during a rapid response when there
9288-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
9396-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
9504-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
9612-511: The rights to it. Initial reception to Hard Boiled was positive. Vincent Canby of The New York Times found it difficult to follow both the action scenes and the subtitles at the same time, but stated that "Mr. Woo does, in fact, seem to be a very brisk, talented director with a gift for the flashy effect and the bizarre confrontation." A review in the Los Angeles Times stated that "With Hard Boiled , John Woo shows himself to be
9720-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
9828-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
9936-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
10044-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
10152-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
10260-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
10368-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
10476-419: Was John Woo's last Hong Kong film before his transition to Hollywood . After receiving criticism for making films that glamorized gangsters, Woo wanted to make a Dirty Harry -styled film to glamorize the police. With the death of screenwriter Barry Wong , the film's screenplay underwent constant changes during filming. New characters such as Mad Dog and Mr. Woo were introduced, while the original plotline of
10584-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
10692-415: Was a sort of pen pal to Teresa. All the characters in Hard Boiled had their voices dubbed by their own actors to save money. Woo stated this was convenient as he did not have to worry about setting up boom mics and other sound elements. Hard Boiled was released on 16 April 1992 in Hong Kong. The film grossed HK$ 19,711,048 which was not as strong of a box office reception as Woo's A Better Tomorrow but
10800-403: Was asked to return to work on Hard Boiled . After reading the script, Woo felt that the character of Johnny Wong was not a strong enough physical threat. After seeing Kwok do several of the stunts while filming, Woo created the character of Mad Dog for him. The scenes in the hospital maternity ward and the warehouse were shot at a studio called "The Coca-Cola Factory", named for its former use as
10908-508: Was choreographed by Woo and Philip Kwok . It was shot with interruptions from local triads in the area asking for protection money, and residents complaining about the noise. The script of the film went through several changes during filming. Due to the length of the film, scenes from a side-story involving the relationship between the characters Tequila and Teresa Chang were cut. Another cut scene included Tequila playing clarinet over Benny's grave. With these cuts, Chow Yun-fat felt his character
11016-451: Was created by jazz musician Michael Gibbs . During promotional screenings, the score for the film was different and was described as "very haunting music", but this score ultimately could not be used as the production crew could not acquire the rights to the music. Other songs featured in the film, include " Hello " by Lionel Richie and the traditional song " Mona Lisa ". Woo chose these songs specifically for their lyrics to suggest that Tony
11124-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
11232-501: Was initially to evaluate the SDU and subsequently trained two land assault teams resulting in considerable changes to SDU equipment and tactics. In 1982, the British Special Boat Service sent an advisory team to Hong Kong to establish a water assault team including training in military diving . The Special Duties Unit consists of a support group, administration group, and the action group. The action group
11340-453: Was inspired by a police officer who was a strong-willed and tough member of the police force, as well as being an avid drummer. This led to Woo having Tequila's character be a musician as well as a cop. Before production started, Woo told his actors that he was not going to make the film as stylish as his previous films, but to have it be more of an "edgy thriller". The role of Teresa Chang was originally made for actress Michelle Yeoh , who had
11448-404: Was not very deep in comparison to Leung's character of Alan. To develop his character more, Chow asked John Woo to insert a mentor character in the film, which Woo himself would play; Chow felt that having Woo in this role would make Woo not cut out these scenes. Philip Kwok's role of Mad Dog was not in the script and was created on the set. Kwok first worked with Woo on his film Once a Thief and
11556-482: Was released by The Criterion Collection in December 1995. A region free DVD of Hard Boiled was released by The Criterion Collection on 10 July 1998. A second Region 1 DVD of the film was released by Fox Lorber . Fox Lorber released the film as a stand-alone release and as a double feature with The Killer on 3 October 2000. Originally, when Miramax bought the rights to Hard Boiled , The Killer , and Bullet to
11664-664: Was slightly better than the domestic gross of The Killer . On the film's initial release in Hong Kong it debuted at number 3 in the box office where it was beaten by Tsui Hark 's Once Upon a Time in China 2 and the Stephen Chow film Fight Back to School II . The North American premiere of Hard Boiled was in September 1992 at the Toronto International Film Festival . At the premiere,
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