MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Hard-Boiled’ Offers Ballet of Mass Destruction : Hong Kong’s John Woo again shows he is one of the premier orchestrators of large-scale mayhem ever to fill the screen.

John Woo’s time is now. Known as the director who never leaves you begging for more, Woo is a veteran of the rowdy, populist Hong Kong cinema who’s been embraced both by fickle critics and the financiers of Hollywood. “Hard-Boiled” (at the Monica 4-Plex) not only demonstrates why, it doesn’t keep you waiting to find out.

This newest Woo film (not counting his English-language debut, the Jean-Claude Van Damme-starring “Hard Target,” due later this year) has barely begun before the excitement begins. The setting is a Hong Kong tea house, an early morning rendezvous for bird fanciers and, as it turns out, a nefarious gang of gunrunners. Checking them out are a squad of plainclothes police, lead by Inspector Yuen, nicknamed Tequila (Chow Yun-Fat), a toothpick-chewing, jazz-playing cop with a hyperactive trigger finger.

Suddenly a signal is given and for the next 10 minutes an intoxicating Bacchanalia of balletic violence fills the screen. For Woo, a natural filmmaker with an eye for arresting images, is also one of the premier orchestrators of large-scale mayhem ever to fill a screen.

It’s not just that bullets uncountable ricochet around, along with assorted bird feathers and bric-a-brac, or that the dead pile up like cordwood. It’s the dazzling way Woo, director of photography Wang Wing-Heng and action coordinator Cheung Jue-Luh pull it all together and put it on display.

Alternating restless, supple camera movements with dynamic cutting, multiple angles and frequent use of slow motion, Woo and company turn out dazzling, energetic action sequences that are as close to pure cinema as anything on the market today. When a survivor of one of Woo’s carnivals of carnage describes it to police as “too quick, like a dream,” there’s no one in the audience who won’t know what she means.

More than that, Woo manages to imbue all this mass destruction (shown here in the original director’s cut) with an air that is almost whimsical. Despite the use of weapons powerful enough to make even NRA members feel secure, the action in “Hard-Boiled” is more fanciful than disturbing and leaves you with the sense that it’s all been quite imaginary. Like the Hong Kong martial arts films they bear a family resemblance to, Woo’s works are lightly playful and inventive in their violence, especially when compared to nominally childish but essentially nasty films like “Home Alone 2.”

“Hard-Boiled’s” script, written by Barry Wong from an original story by Woo (who also has a hand in the editing and a small part as a philosophical bartender) is a not unfamiliar tale of conflicting loyalties and betrayal. At first it centers on the rivalry between competing arms dealers, the old-style paternalistic Mr. Hoi (Kwan Hoi-San) and an up-and-coming psycho named Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong) who is given to somber pronouncements such as “Everything will end but war” and “He who holds a gun holds the power.”

But, like other Woo films, including 1989’s knockout “The Killer,” “Hard-Boiled” can’t resist the lure of male bonding, focusing on the against-all-odds friendship of Tequila with an enigmatic hit man named Tony (Tony Leung) who broods all alone on a boat filled with the origami cranes he fashions every time he puts someone away.

Finally, of course, it is the action that draws you to “Hard-Boiled” (Times-rated Mature for violence), everything from the small-scale stuff like a single-shot mob hit in a library to the film’s serio-comic finale in a major hospital, where comically reverent shots of babies being rescued alternate with bursts of automatic weapons fire. The film’s plot may have more holes than one of Tequila’s innumerable victims, but when a visual stylist like Woo is at his peak, no one even thinks of caring.

‘Hard-Boiled’

Chow Yun-Fat: Inspector Yuen

Tony Leung: Tony

Teresa Mo: Teresa

Philip Chan: Superintendent Chan

Anthony Wong: Johnny Wong

Kwan Hoi-San: Mr. Hoi

A-Lung Bowie: Lam

Golden Princess presents a Milestone Pictures production, released by Rim Film Distributors Inc. Director John Woo. Producers Linda Kuk & Terence Chang. Screenplay Barry Wong, based on an original story by John Woo. Cinematographer Wang Wing-Heng. Editor David Wu, Kai Kit-Wai & John Woo. Music Michael Gibbs. Production design James Leung. Action coordinator Cheung Jue-Luh. Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (violence).