Today, John Woo might be known more for his doves and misfires than for anything else over his long career. Which, to an extent, is disappointing, because Woo, who got his start directing Hong Kong action movies, gave the world the bruising and bloody genre of gun fu. The action style, explained in a new installment of Frame By Frame, was born on the set of Woo’s 1986 Chow Yun-Fat starrer “A Better Tomorrow.”
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Gun fu, if you can’t guess from the name, is the brutal blending of gunfights and kung fu, as seen recently in “The Raid: Redemption” and “John Wick,” though it first exploded into Hollywood consciousness with “The Matrix,” which manipulated time and gravity to create some of the most innovative gun battles in memory. The 6-minute video essay, “Gun Fu: How To Master The Art Of Kung Fu With Guns,” runs down just how Woo and his successors altered frame rates and used rubber guns to create the hand-to-hand shootouts we’re all now intimately familiar with.
So, despite its actual impracticality and unrealistic nature, and that John Woo’s Hollywood career has all but ground to a stop following 2004’s tragic flop “Paycheck,” gun fu truly has changed the way action movies are choreographed, whether or not they overtly incorporate the fighting style. If anything, it’s helped to usher in the brutal, bone-crunching fights that define action movies of the 21st century.
Check out the video essay and let us know your favorite gun-fu flick in the comments section.
