Of Heroic Bloodshed and Quests Fulfilled

First, a brief (HA!) diversion into the genre of
what had come to be called 'Heroic Bloodshed'.
Many would argue that the Heroic Bloodshed genre 
(hereafter HB) was developed in Hong Kong in the
early to mid 80's as a logical outgrowth of and 
replacement to the venerable Martial Arts genre.

I would disagree with this.  I would put the
development of the HB movie as an [i]American[/i]
development!  I offer as evidence a little movie
by Don Siegel that came out in 1971.  You may have
heard of it - [b]Dirty Harry[/b].

For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it concerns
the efforts of the San Francisco PD to capture a lunatic 
killer.  In particular the efforts of "Dirty" Harry 
Callahan, as played by Clint Eastwood.  The movie was
pretty much blasted by most critics because of the incredible
amounts of overt violence, violence committed by both the
cops and the villains!

This didn't sit well with American audiences who had 
become accustomed to movies with a 'hero' (who, naturally
didn't swear, or drink, or kill) pitted against a 'villi an'
who did all of the above.  The black and white separation
between 'good' and 'bad' conveniently overlooked the fact
that there is no absolute good or absolute bad (check out
Jerome Bixby's 'Trace' for a wonderful example of this)
Even critics who could see past the violence used words
like 'gritty' to describe the movie, giving even 'good'
reviews a negative slant.

This pretty much doomed HB movies from being made in the 
US for many years to come.

However, the Hong Kong movie industry was never one to
miss an opportunity, and so, the HB genre was reborn with a 
vengeance on this little island.

One of the reasons that these films were so readily accepted here
may have been because of the long history of the influence of
the Yakuza in many Asian cultures.  American movies have long tried to
portray the Yakuza as simply an Asian version of the Mafia.  They
have focused on the extortion and protection rackets and even on
the drug dealing while overlooking why the Yakuza were quite often
welcomed into regions with open arms.
Simply put, rural regions in China (and Japan and Korea) were more
or less left to their own devices for much of the time.  The only time
the government was visible was during tax season.  Other than that, 
the people might see a magistrate every couple of months and a policeman
every fortnight.  With no one to protect them, people were oftentimes
at the mercy of any outlaws in the area.
Enter the Yakuza who, for a monthly fee, made sure that nothing bad
happened to your store or house or family...
As it happened, the Yakuza didn't technically extort any money,
they never threatened to burn down your business if you didn't pay,
there were usually more than enough people more than willing to pay 
for the Yakuza's services.  A 'protected' merchant could reasonably
expect any stolen merchandise to be returned and/or compensation
for his loss to be forthcoming.  The Yakuza would make sure that
the thief wouldn't steal again, not by cutting off his hands so that 
he couldn't steal (or do much of anything else, for that matter) again,
but by cutting off his [i]head[/i] so that he wouldn't even [i]think[/i]
of stealing again!
The Yakuza were the LAW in many parts of China, Hong Kong, Japan etc
so people were somewhat accustomed to violent protectors (of course
all of this was before drug dealing became the number one criminal 
activity throughout the world - which changed the dynamics considerably!)

Probably the best known of the HB directors (at least to US
audiences) is John Woo.  He pretty much set in stone the formula
for these films:

	1.  You must have some cops
	2.  You must have a stone, cold killer (usually the hero!)
	3.  Lots of people must die
	4.  Only the cops survive
	
	Check out, [b]The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head,
Heroes Shed no Tears[/b] etc.  You may notice that there are actually
no cops in [b]Heroes Shed no Tears[/b] but this was an early entry.
The genre reached its penultimate glory in the massively violent
[b]Hard Boiled[/b].  The hospital shoot out between Chow Yun Fat,
Tony Leung and Bowie Lam may be the best of its kind ever filmed.

Of course other directors worked in the genre, too.  Tsui Hark, 
Chang Cheh, Johnny To, Ringo Lam and Wong Kar Wai to name but a few.
Many stayed somewhat true to their Martial Arts roots (Chang Chen and 
Wong Kaar Wai in particular) and even John Woo made a 'Heroic Bloodshed'
Swordplay drama [b]Last Hurrah for Chivalry[/b].

But it is director