Last Hurrah for Chivalry
Guns weren’t always John Woo’s weapon of choice. Before he became the dove-bothering godfather of the new wave of Hong Kong action cinema in the 80s and 90s with the likes of A Better Tomorrow (1986) and The Killer (1989), Woo earned his stripes on the roster of Golden Harvest as one of the studio’s go-to guys, directing over a dozen features for the studio in its heyday.
His violent period piece Last Hurrah for Chivalry represents one of his better earlier efforts, offering more in its rehearsals for the thematic and aesthetic tics that would come to define his mature style than it does in its by-numbers narrative. Woo doesn’t spare on the claret, his slow-mo-enhanced sword fights and early take on notions of honour and duty prefiguring his symphonic elevations of violence to come.