This DVD is available for purchase at www.hkflix.com

Once a Thief

Golden Harvest, 1990, 102 min.

AKA: Killer Target

Manadrin title: Zong Heng Si Hai

Nominated for Best Film at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards

Director: John Woo
Stars: Chow Yun-Fat ("Joe"), Leslie Cheung ("Jim"), Cherie Chung ("Cherie"), John Woo ("Stanley Wu"), Chu Kong, Kenneth Tsang
Producers: Terence Chang and Linda Kuk
Writer: John Woo
Action director: Philip Kwok
Car stunt director: Remy Julienne
Editor: David Wu

Available on video (widescreen and subtitled) from Tai Seng; available on DVD from Columbia (click here for a review)

"They only stop to reload."

The plot is a fairly simple one -- a trio of thieves' friendship is put to the test after one of them is hurt badly during a job. Of course, this being a John Woo movie, there's a bit more to it than that. Chow and Cherie Chung are a couple, but Leslie Cheung also likes Cherie, and so moves in on her after the botched job. There's maybe a bit too much time devoted to scenes dealing with this stuff, but overall this is a pretty good movie.

It's more light-hearted than a lot of Woo's modern works, so if you're expecting The Killer or Hard-Boiled, you might be disappointed. But it does move along at a pretty good clip, and the chemistry between Chow and Cheung (which was touched on in A Better Tomorrow 2) is great -- plus the final shootout (which has Chow doing his best Bruce Lee imitation, complete with backflips) is exciting. It might be too comedic or over-the-top for many people (in many ways, this feels more like a Wong Jing movie than a John Woo production), but Once a Thief is definitely worth a look for action/comedy fans.

RATING: 7

Interesting trivia:

• Once a Thief is a remake of a Alain Delon (one of Woo and Chow's favorite actors) movie called Les Adventiers and gets a lot of inspiration from Cary Grant (another of the pair's favorite actors) heist films from the 1950's and 60's like Charade.
• The film premiered a mere ten weeks after shooting wrapped, which is very quick for a film, especially one featuring action sequences.
• John Woo chose to do this film because he wanted to do something more light-hearted after The Killer and Bullet in the Head (which flopped in Hong Kong on their initial release). The strategy seems to have paid off -- the movie was successful in Hong Kong and allowed Woo to get funding for his next movie, Hard-Boiled.

Back to Movie Review index