In the 70s John Woo worked as assistant director on Shaw Brother's martial arts movies such as Chang Cheh's Blood Brothers and his first directing gig was also in that genre (The Dragon Tamers from 1975). After doing a few period martial arts films, he moved on to do several comedies for Golden Harvest (among them From Riches To Rags and Plain Jane To The Rescue). Then John took on gunplay action, the genre he's synonymous with today and the result was Heroes Shed No Tears. No one's quite sure when this was made (sometime between 1983-1985) but clear is that Woo wasn't satisfied with the end result and shelved the movie. When he then finally got his big breakthrough with A Better Tomorrow in 1986, Golden Harvest capitalized on his popularity and brought out Heroes Shed No Tears the same year.

The Thai government decides to once and for all stop the flow of drugs originating from the so called Golden Triangle (in around Burma, Cambodia and Thailand) and they send a team of Chinese soldiers to capture the head of the drug organization, General Samoan. They manage to capture and flee with him but hot on their tail are the army. The lead Chinese soldier Can (Eddy Ko from The Mission) also has his family temporarily living in the area and need to get them out safely...

I do agree with John that the final film isn't particulary stunning but it has a few watchable aspects, specifically fans will find it interesting to see what kind of vision the director had of action at the time. Everyone thinks of action when John Woo's name is mentioned so let's start talking about that. I find it absolutely amazing how well he had fine-tuned his style between this movie and A Better Tomorrow (the time in between should be 3 years tops). Fact is, the gunplay isn't particularly impressive in Heroes Shed No Tears. It's memorable because there is lots of it but technically it's light-years away from what Woo displayed in the classic restaurant shoot-out in A Better Tomorrow for example.

What he basically shows is a lot of shooting and a lot of people falling over dead. Slow-motion in the middle of intense action is another trademark of Woo's and we find it here as well. Again, the execution and timing of it is lacking but there's glimpses here and there of the greatness he would later constantly display in terms of slo-mo. The scene that stands out here is Eddy Ko's first encounter with Lam Ching Ying's character, setting up the rivalry. The editing and the stunt shown in slow motion is neatly done. Another thing to look out for is similar shots and scenes subsequently seen in John's filmography. The final showdown between Eddy Ko and Lam Ching Ying seems like an distant relative of Hard Target's finale and one of the great shots from Hard Boiled turns up here in almost identical form.

Technically the production feels a little rushed and therefore the word unpolished comes to mind. I always say that the best directors test out things until they get it right in another movie and therefore I'm willing to forgive a completely mistimed wirepull in one of the action sequences. Another thing John injects in his films is high levels of bloodshed and what's seen in Heroes Shed No Tears makes it more related to Bullet In The Head. The effects are pretty crude but I bet there will be viewers that will be uncomfortable with one or two scenes. A scene many will not be uncomfortable with but will agree that it's out of place is the sex scene. I highly doubt Woo was behind having this in the movie and it feels like something the studio wanted to get in there in order to sell the film.

This is a really fast paced film which is a great plus but because of the really minimal plot, John needs to fill out the short running time . This results in two comedy scenes that are, one, out of place and second of all not even remotely funny. They actually makes some of the soldiers seem rather callous and death played for laughs isn't something that goes hand in hand with an otherwise serious film. Comedy did have a small place in A Better Tomorrow but there it didn't hurt the overall flow as much as it did here. That you could have drama and a high amount of action was something I was truly impressed by after going through my first few John Woo films. The drama does indeed turn up here but instead of loyalty between partners or brothers, Woo focuses more on family bonds. It's portrayed pretty decent and while there are a few nicely handled father-son scenes, the overall impression is that it's too melodramatic, something that lessens the effect.

If the high amount of action or drama doesn't sound good then the actors are something to remember from Heroes Shed No Tears, in particular Lam Ching Ying and Eddy Ko. Eddy doesn't have an extremely expressive face but he can achieve a really cold look to it, making him seem more efficient as a killing machine. The mentioned over the top drama is performed well but Eddy is more memorable with a machine gun in his hand. Lam Ching Ying (from Mr. Vampire) pretty much rises above all aspects of the entire film. He makes up for any lack of characterdepth by just showing an extreme determination and relentlessness in the role. All he needs to do is switch to his meanest glare and the screen is his! I absolutely love his performance and it's worth picking up the disc because of that I would say. The little kid (sorry, don't know his name) who plays Eddy Ko's son and western actor Phillip Lofredo also do commendable work.

John Woo's Heroes Shed No Tears holds interest mainly because it's a b-movie by a director who would quickly become part of the A-list. The ongoing development of action from Woo is also what makes his first gunplay movie worth watching...and Lam Ching Ying.

A group of mercenaries, led by the tough-as-nails Chung, are sent into Thailand to capture a general, who also happens to be one of the Golden Triangle's biggest drug runners. After rescuing Chung's son and sister-in-law, they head to the Vietnamese border, where they witness a group of soldiers torturing and executing a group of reporters. The mercenaries decide to help out and Chung shoots the Vietnamese colonel in the eye, which causes him to hunt down the group mercilessly. The group's numbers begin to dwindle as they are hunted by Taiwanese and Vietnamese troops, as well as native headhunters. Taking refuge at Chung's friend Jimmy's hideout provides no safety, as the crazed colonel launches an all-out attack where it seems if no one will survive.

Heroes Shed No Tears was the first time Woo worked outside of the comedy and kung-fu genres. It's a gritty, unrelenting movie (save for a short comedic gambling sequence) that clearly shows the beginnings of the "heroic bloodshed" films Woo would soon complete. The gunfights are well staged, but they are extremely violent and bloody, even by Woo's standards. Woo once said that "there is never violence for violence's sake in a John Woo movie," but it seems as if he wasn't following that formula here. For instance, there is a part in the movie when one of the mercenaries is killed by some of the Thai troops; his arm is chopped off and they drive four spears into him -- all shown in very gory detail. I'm not against violence or gore in films, but a lot of it in Heroes Shed No Tears just seems gratuitous.

Other areas of the film are weak as well. The pacing is kind of uneven, and there are a couple of sequences in the film (most notably a drug/sex scene) that grind the story to a halt. Also, except for the two leads, many of the actors in the film just aren't all that good and deliver their lines very stiffly. Thankfully, some of the relationships in Heroes (such as Chung and Jimmy's) help give the movie a soul and clearly provide the basis for the way Woo explored relationships in his later films such as A Better Tomorrow and The Killer.

Overall, though, the film does deliver some great action sequences. A lot of people have dismissed Heroes as being a somewhat minor film in Woo's filmography, but I think it marks a major turning point in his career and deserves to be viewed by any serious Woo fan.

Lucky for you I spent my money on a copy of the latest Giant Robot instead.

Although if you think you will escape the wrath of a Don "The Dragon" Wilson kickboxing vampire film, you are sadly mistaken. You've merely been granted a temporary reprieve. If I am in an especially nasty mood, I may also post a review of Future Kick.

Hmmm, maybe Don "The Dragon" Wilson can team up with that Roman Catholic kungfu priest from Dead Alive ("I kick ass for The Lord!"), and the two of them can travel the countryside kungfu-ing the shit out of the living dead. Outside of the realm of Billy Chong films, there simply aren't enough kickboxing zombie movies.

Of course, the funny part about all this is that absolutely none of it is related to the film I'm reviewing in any way other than "I reviewed this film instead of the Don Wilson kickboxing vampire hunter film."

Unlike hundreds of other sites, I've pretty much shied away from the big names in Hong Kong film making, or at least away from their big films. Sure, we'll review a Jackie Chan film or two, but it'll be Fantasy Mission Force. And as you will see here, we'll review a John Woo film, but it sure as heck won't be The Killer or Face/Off.

Most folks cite the slick gangster film A Better Tomorrow as the breakout film for both director Woo and actor Chow Yun-fat. And that is, in part, true. It was the film that made them both household names (Chow far more than Woo), and it spawned hundreds of imitations. Where Jet Li's Shaolin Temple made mainland Chinese kids want to quit school and go join Shaolin Temple, A Better Tomorrow made Hong Kong kids wear Ray Bans and overcoats and quit school to join triad gangs. Woo must be really proud of that.

A Better Tomorrow didn't come from nowhere though, and a good film fan should be curious about how that film evolved from the muck that was John Woo's largely unsuccessful early career, which he spent making asinine slapstick comedies and other films worth forgetting or never experiencing in the first place. Woo's career as the high priest of "heroic bloodshed" began early on in his career with films like Countdown in Kungfu starring a young Jackie Chan and Delon Tam Tao-liang (and Sammo Hung wearing goofy Jerry Lewis novelty teeth in an otherwise very serious role). Things really started to develop in the fine film Last Hurrah for Chivalry, which again showed Woo's penchant for male bonding and gore. But this was nothing out of the ordinary for a kungfu film, and certainly nothing out of the ordinary for a disciple of legendary Shaw Brothers director Chang Cheh. It wasn't until Woo was able to add guns into the mix that he really began his journey.

The oft-ignored, intensely violent Heroes Shed No Tears is the first film to really mark his break from the inane and stomach churning slapstick "comedies" of his early years and his move toward gun-oriented action films. Heroes Shed No Tears is his Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare's early drama about feuding families is soaked in gratuitous gore and violence. Tongues are ripped out. Heads are hacked from their bodies then catapulted back to their loved ones during dinner. It is a nonstop parade of brutality, gore, and tastelessness that most Shakespeare scholars like to pretend never happened. Obviously, it's my favorite play by the guy, and it's important historically not just because it's his first published play (as far as I remember), but because it also contains all the elements and themes that would become the crux of Shakespeare's work. They are rough, raw, and not all that well written, but they are most definitely there, taking form like amoebas in a great primordial soup of dramatics.

Heroes Shed No Tears is exactly the same thing for Woo. It's horrifically gory and violent -- this is not the stylish, over-the-top ballet of violence Woo would become known for, but it's still a look at the outrageous lengths to which Woo would take gun battles. All the basic ingredients that gel in A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head, and The Killer are present in Heroes Shed No Tears. They're raw and underdeveloped, but there they are. And just like Shakespeare fans ignore Titus Andronicus, most Woo fans have skipped over this mean-spirited little number in favor of his higher profile films. And you know, just like I love Titus Andronicus, I love this film.

This is, in many ways, a modern-day adaptation of the Lone Wolf and Cub story. The underrated Ko Hung stars as a soldier-of-fortune type leader of a ragtag band of mercenaries fighting the drug cartels in the Golden Triangle. For some reason, he also keeps his family nearby, which you wouldn't think he would do. I mean, if you are out with the boys killing drug smugglers, you have to expect at some point they're going to look for a way to get back at you. It's sort of the nature of the business, you know? And if, after a long day of shooting a bazooka at a warehouse full of heroin or opium, you hop in the jeep and drive down the street to the house where your family lives, well, you gotta sorta expect that the drug smugglers might go there as well.

But never mind that. Ko and the boys capture a bigtime general who is trafficking drugs, and no sooner do they have the cuffs on the guy than they are being pursued by vengeful lackeys. Fearing for their lives, Ko, his men, his son, and a couple other people who serve no real purpose other than to get in the way, all pile into the family jeep, which is really sort of comical. It's like a little clown car or possibly the antlers of the title character in Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, where the moose had like two dozens assorted animals hitching a ride on his antlers.

The nastiest thorn in Ko's side is a maniacal military man played by the one-eyebrowed priest himself, Lam Ching-ying. A lot of people site Lam Ching-ying as being the soldier-of-fortune in this film. Obviously, those people are insane or just don't know who Lam Ching-ying is. He is the crazy general, not the noble hero. Sort of like me. He engages in a series of very bloody gunfights with Ko's men, and even bullies some spooky but cool local trackers to badger, kill, and set booby traps for Ko. One of the most notably Lone Wolf and Cub inspired moments comes when Ko's son is trapped in a burning field and buries himself to escape the flames. If you are up on your Lone Wolf stories (an incredibly violent series of Japanese comic books and films about a lone samurai assassin who roams the bloody countryside with his little son in tow), one of the films features a scene where wee Daigoro is trapped in the middle of a burning field and does exactly the same thing. Or maybe that's just something they teach in Asia, the "stop, drop, and bury" method of fire prevention.

As Ko and his boys fight their way across the rural landscape of ... Thailand? Burma? Laos? I can't remember, but as they do it they meet a variety of other-worldly characters, including a pot-smoking American soldier and his wife. The entire journey is somewhat surreal, and it actually reminds me a lot of Apocalypse Now in that as the journey progresses, things get increasingly primitive, alien, and weird.

Woo takes the violence way over the top in a grueling scene in which Lam Ching-ying, who has one of his eyeballs shredded (when Ko shoots it out through the scope of the sniper rifle Lam was aiming through -- a scene that has been ripped off dozens of times since then, including Sniper and Saving Private Ryan), extracts horrifying revenge on a captured Ko by attempting to sew his eyelids open. This is shown from KO'S POINT OF VIEW as Lam giggles and we see the dangling, bloody thread drooping in and out of our point of view. This is actually even more disturbing and gross than I'm expressing. When Ko is rescued, his son has to chew the threads out of his dad's eyelids. I don't know why he had to chew them out, but hey -- who am I to argue?

Despite the obviously low budget, Heroes Shed No Tears (especially when you sew their eyes open) has a lot going for it. It's pretty much non-stop action from the opening scene, and it's easily Woo's most relentlessly downbeat, gory film. That's saying a lot when you remember the films Woo would go on to make. The film is fast-paced and exciting, and best of all, all bets are off on who is going to die. None of the characters are all that well developed, but Woo has never been a master at realistic characters. His people are always charicatures, symbols, and archetypes.

This actually aids the film, because you never really know who is going to buy it. In a Hollywood film, you know exactly who will die in a war movie. The noble leader will die. The jack-ass of the bunch will have a heroic change of heart at some crucial moment, and he will sacrifice himself. The guy with the girl back home who writes him to tell him she's in love with someone else will probably die. The nerdy pacifist guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a notebook full of writing will probably end up having to kill a lot of people in the end, but he'll probably live and be the film's narrator. He'll also be named "Scoop" or "Squirt" or "Specs" or something suitably nerdy. In another life, he would be a zine editor.

But in Heroes Shed No Tears pretty much anyone is fodder for the cannon. You half expect even the main guy to buy it halfway through, or even the little kid. You won't find too many films these days that beat the shit out of a little kid with as much glee as this film does. And he's not even that annoying, so you actually feel bad for the boy. Despite shallow characters, Woo successfully makes you feel for their plight and root for them on their utterly unreal odyssey through a mad landscape.

And of course, there is lots of friendship, bonding, exploding, and slow motion gun fights. Woo would become a much better technician in later films, but there is so much passion and energy in this film that you can't help but be taken in by it. It's uneven in places, but it's liking watching a surreal wartime flashback. Apocalypse Now meets Lone Wolf and Cub meets Southern Comfort (the movie, not the drink). It's not Woo's most talked about film, but it's one of my all-time favorites, and like I said, a boiling primordial soup in which all his signature themes and stylistic innovations can be seen in their embryonic, rudimentary stages.

Somewhere in this nihilistic, wrenching experiment is Bullet in the Head, and even though it's goofier than that later Woo masterpiece, it's still right up there in terms of sheer fierceness. The casual fan will probably be turned off by the tremendously grueling violence or the low-budget look. Those who stick around and endure the eyelid sewing scene get to witness what is still one of Woo's most brutal, surreal, and surprisingly poetic efforts.