Look, John Woo was completely not intending to inform a queer story with “Exhausting Boiled,” however the intimacy he permits Tequila and Alan to share on-screen and the “will-they, will not they” rigidity of their life-or-death eventualities can not help however really feel like romance. There are various cases the place the characters put a gun to the opposite’s head in a face-off as if Woo is teasing the viewers with the potential for their lips locking after we least anticipate it. These males are China’s reply to Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, in spite of everything, and if latest occasions have proven us something, it is that the world could be a lot happier in the event that they too simply kissed.
If that wasn’t sufficient, when the villainous Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong) lastly has Tequila in his clutches, he humiliates him like a sadistic dom about his potential to “end” as a substitute of simply killing him. It is a energy play, certain, however it’s additionally a brilliant homosexual one. The climax of the movie is roughly 40 minutes of high-octane motion in a hospital the place bullets fly, rooms explode, unhealthy guys are thrown via glass, sufferers are evacuated en masse, and a complete nursery of newborns is scaled down a window to security. It’s the actioniest of all motion movies, and but when you hear the phrase “queer learn,” it is not possible to not additionally see the movie as a love story.
“Exhausting Boiled” is accessible to hire on VOD.