Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Fantastic!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Bullet In The Head is John Woo's most personal film. I don't know why that is, but this movie is definitely the most grueling, brutal, and certainly the darkest movie of John Woo's entire career. The harrowing events that take place on screen will make even those with strong stomachs squirm. And it's not really even the gore that is disturbing, it's the stuff that our three lead characters are put through, the true hell of what war can be. In case you didn't know, Bullet In The Head is a story about three very close friends, Ben (Tony Leung), the natural leader of the group, Frank (Jacky Chung), the friendly one who will do anything for his friends, and Paul (Waisse Lee), the one who tends to give in to his darker impulses. All these characters are played superbly, I've always liked Tony Leung, and Jacky Chung was just brilliant. Out three main characters travel to Vietnam during the 60's to escape from the law and hopefully earn a bit of profit from the war going on. Things start going wrong very quickly, and eventually our leads are flung into a world that they have never experienced before, and they all adapt quite differently. Bullet In The Head is about how even the closest of friends can be torn apart, and it offers none of the hope that is seen in most John Woo films. This movie is greatly depressing, and as I said, usually very hard to watch, and at the end you'll be emotionally exhausted by what you have just seen. But this is why Bullet In The Head is so great. John Woo is famed for his action, so I guess I should mention how BITH holds up in that department. Obviously, very well. I hadn't really heard much about the action in this movie as I had about the depressing story, but it's just as good and the quality is just as high. When Chow Yun-Fat is nowhere to be found, Simon Yam is your go to guy, and he plays the ice cool character of Luke to perfection. The action is explosive and impressive, just what you would expect from Woo. The acting is all awesome, as is the pacing. There's some cheese here and there, especially at the beginning when we see 3 grown men jump rope together and ride bikes... yep... Other than that, Bullet In The Head is perfect and highly recommended to any action fan, John Woo fan, or anyone who wants to see some of the most intense and sad events ever put on film.

I recently watched the John Woo film "Bullet In The Head" on youtube.It's a pity that it does not have a good R1 DVD release because this movie is simply amazing! It was originally meant to be a prequel to "A Better Tomorrow", it even has the forced whiskey and urine drinking scene mentioned by Chow Yun Fat in Better Tomorrow 1.I personally think this is the best Vietnam movie of all time(even though it isn't completely about Vietnam).Yes, even better than Platoon, Dead Presidents and Full Metal Jacket(I didn't see Deer Hunter or Apocalypse Now).The movie has excellent acting, an excellent storyline, great dramatic moments and also a good amount of action/violence which makes this an overall excellent movie.Besides being a Vietnam movie, it's also a movie about friendship and betrayal.The film starts out in the late 1960's when you see three poor friends who are also part of a gang.One gets married and is worried about why his other friend has not shown up.This is because he was beaten by members of a rival gang, but he would not tell his friend until later.Afterwords, they go get revenge on the rival gang leader and accidentally kill him.They then do a job which will send them away while the police forget about them.The three friends need to get some gold in Saigon.While they are there, one of the friends falls in love with a singer who is being abused and kept there.He decides to save her as well and with the help of another man they do.However, they get caught by Vietnamese, the girl gets shot and they are held prisoner.While they, they are forced to witness atrocities.One friend is forced to shoot American prisoners, which he really does not want to do.They end up escaping but the greedy friend saves the gold as opposed to the other friend and the friend gets a bullet lodged in his brain.He is still alive, only now a messed up heroin addict.The friend is saddened to see him like it and kills him mercifully.He goes back and sees his wife and son.He also settles a score with his other friend who betrayed them.The ending is very good.Hopefully this gets a good R1 release, and if it does not, you should find a way to see it anyway, it's an excellent movie.

I've been using my DVD subscription service to go back over old films that I have either not seen or have not seen for ages and am focusing on those from the Far East that everyone expects you to have seen – mostly, at this point, the work of Kurosawa. I came to Bullet in the Head because I do enjoy John Woo's action films – even some of those he did when he came to America. As an "earlier" Woo film, I knew what to expect from Bullet in the Head, or at least I thought I did. Going with it we appear to have the standards of his creations all in place. Criminals, tragedy, flamboyant gunplay and massive action sequences with relationship drama going on in the middle of it. All of this is here and it works pretty well. Essentially it is the tale of three friends who go through crime and war together, changing their dynamics in tragic ways. At this level it is fine and I was interested in the characters and the relationships – OK, not a lot of complexity in there but enough to suit an action film such as this.The action sequences involve the usual jumping around, use of slow-motion and multiple showers of bullets. So, in essence, I can see why the film is loaded down with 5* reviews from the majority of the site's prolific reviewers (that's the filter I use when viewing the comments section), because the film does deliver much of what one would expect from John Woo and John Woo is/was good at doing it. But here is the problem – he sets it in Vietnam. Not only that but he acknowledges the horror of the war and the impact it had on those involved in it – mental and physical. OK, so nothing wrong with that in itself but it doesn't work when you have one scene of extreme violence that is shocking and harrowing and then you following up immediately with one that is exciting and well-choreographed. The extreme violence doesn't take away from the central story (because it is part of it) but by mixing it up with a much darker version of it he sets out a real challenge for himself, which is – can he manage to produce a film that explores themes covered in "serious" films such as Deer Hunter, while also delivering an action film based on the violent splintering of three friends? Sadly the answer is no, he cannot, and this is demonstrated within the film. It is a clumsy affair that does deliver harrowing scenes but is scared to linger on them or to do more with them that cheapen them by only having them as a device to move the plot the way it needs to go. It also doesn't help that Woo doesn't seem interested in being subtle or clever – so a film that really should end in an emotional kick in the guts in the boardroom (where the explosions are character based) spills out into a car chase and shootout that isn't exciting and doesn't fit with the tone of the ending. Within this the cast do a reasonably good job and some do almost manage to carry the film across the jumps in content and style. I always like Tony Leung and he is a good piece of casting. He doesn't totally manage to convince with what the script asks him to do but he is a good heart of the film. Cheung is not quite as good but works well with Leung to build a believable friendship. Lee has less to work with as his character is a lot simpler and I thought his performance was weaker as a result. Yam was an invincible and cool presence that didn't add a lot to the story but made for a good character.Overall, Bullet in the Head produces many of the things that I came to the film for and as such had enough to keep me interested. The problem was that it never hung together convincingly and the use of the war as a backdrop introduced things that could have been impacting but just didn't gel. The action scenes are good (even if not as well choreographed due to the scale of the battles) but the plot is the start of the problem in a film that is never what it should be and certainly shouldn't be listed among the "must-see" films from Woo.

John Woo directs an absolute merciless Vietnam war drama that is comparable to The Deer Hunter in it's power and is quite possibly one of the greatest movies of Woo's career. The movie follows three trouble-making kids (Tony Leung, Waise Lee and Jackie Cheung) who are exiled to Vietnam to escape the Hong Kong authorities after a rival gang member is killed by them, once in Saigon the run into "The Viet Cong" who are far worse than the HK authorities and their rival gang and what the V.C do to our trio makes them regret in all their hearts that they didn't go to prison in the much safer Hong Kong. A Bullet In The Head would be a tale about friendship overcoming the hard times of war, if the friendships in the movie actually prevailed. Instead the movie gives us a heart wrenching look at war and what it does to the three friends in the movie. The kids in the movie are in the beginning not very sympathetic and give off the impression that they deserve what they get but once they go to Vietnam you realize just how much in over their head they are and Woo filters the emotion from this situation and effectively conveys a story that is hard to watch but very rewarding nonetheless. After witnessing the debacle of Windtalkers I decided to see if Woo could direct war, well it goes without saying this blows that one out of the water. This is up there with Hard Boiled and The Killer as Woo's best film.* * * * out of 4-(Excellent. A Must See!)