Hard Boiled Inspiration

[JohnR]

I watched Hard Boiled again last night; I hadn't seen it in about 4-5 years. I was jolted when I saw the scene in which Phillip Chan Yan-Kin gives Tony Leung the cigarette lighter. Wow, identical scene, except a watch instead of a lighter, in Infernal Affairs between Anthony Wong and Tony. The boss cop who's the only one who knows the undercover cop's real identity; the stress of the dual identities on the undercover cop; the boss cop remembering the undercover's birthday when the undercover had forgotten it; the change from dramatic tension to brotherly laughs. It's all there. A very obvious borrowing by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. Or "homage" as they like to say.

Don't get me wrong, I still admire Lau and Mak and I.A. is one of my favorite movies. It was just interesting to see them lift a whole scene from John Woo and use it in theirs.

Another, not so obvious, borrowing was when Jackie Chan runs down the hall in front of the approaching explosions and fireball in City Hunter (a scene I see frequently now, in HK and the US). This appears to have been directly inspired by the scene in Hard Boiled where Chow Yun Fat running down the hospital corridor carrying the baby. Or did John Woo borrow the idea from an earlier movie?

Has Hard Boiled been the source of such direction inspiration in any other movies?

[Beat TG]

IMDB has a list of movies that inspired some scenes in the movie as well as movies that got inspired by Hard Boiled overall.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104684/movieconnections

[mrblue]

IIRC, Infernal Affairs used the same location for the "lighter gift" scene as Hard Boiled as well. Seeing as how Andrew Lau was a protoge of Wong Jing, it's not surprising that he like to "pay homage" to other movies in his own

And the whole "running from fireballs/explosions" bit is an action movie cliche that was used many times before HB and many many times (especially with the surge in CGI) since.