Woo-ing Video Games

Woo's style may have become a tired act in film. But just when we thought we'd had enough of people jumping through plate-glass windows shooting handguns akimbo while in slow-motion, video game fans were introduced to Max Payne. Developed by Remedy Entertainment, produced by 3D Realms and distributed by the now defunct Gathering of Developers in 2001, Max Payne was a third-person action game featuring an anti-hero cop main character, a dark and gritty urban setting and cinematic action pieces stolen almost directly from the work of John Woo. Max Payne was the first game to incorporate the slow-motion action of Hong Kong Blood Opera mixed with the bullet-time effects of "The Matrix" (released just two years prior). The game was a phenomenal success spawning a sequel and its own gaggle of rip-offs (I'm looking at you, Dead to Rights). All of this history is here just so you can understand why John Woo would turn to video games to tell his stories.

Chow Yun-Fat in "Stranglehold"

The upcoming game entitled John Woo's "Stranglehold" is for all intents and purposes a sequel to the movie "Hard Boiled." Why not just make a movie sequel and retake the action-director crown from the posers, you might ask? Well, when you've seen your work twisted to the point of being a punch line in one medium, and then watched others thrive on your ideas in another, the answer becomes clear. John Woo wanted to give gamers the true experience of playing as Inspector Tequila (played by Chow Yun-Fat, who takes on the Hong Kong mafia). As a gamer, when I watched the demo of "Stranglehold" at E3 this year, my first thought was, "Oh, so it's 'Max Payne 3.'" I'll bet this is the exact response that John Woo finds infuriating, but it can't be helped. Max Payne took the Woo style of action and translated it into videogame form first. So how do Woo and Midway convince us that they aren't copying Max Payne? From the looks of "Stranglehold," they take everything up two notches.