Best movie of this year hands down!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Heroes Shed No Tears is John Woo's first action movie that has guns and is not a martial arts movie. Woo made A Better Tomorrow right after this. Eddie Ko leads a group of Chinese mercenaries that are to capture a drug lord from The Golden Triangle Area near the Vietnamese border with Laos and protect his family that live in a village near the border. Eddie Ko and his men also in addition to fighting the drug lord's men who are trying to set him free, they must also contend with the Vietnamese army led by a vicious colonel played by Lam Ching Ying. This is absolutely for the most hardcore of action fans. Heroes Shed No Tears is raw and nihilistic action at its finest. This is ultra violence with brutal shoot outs, bodies exploding, people getting impaled, chopped up etc. The acting performances are good, especially Eddie Ko who brings a lot of depth and emotion to his role. The action is incredible, but much more gritty than Woo's future efforts and the mayhem level is kicked to eleven. This gets compared to Eastern Condors sometimes, but this is way more unpolished and fierce. I would recommend this for fans of extreme cinema for sure. Plus this movie is very well made and ahead of its time.

Version: Cantonese audio, English subtitles (by SBS)While watching the first scene of 'Heroes Shed No Tears': Me: "Wow, I wonder how much the producers spent on explosions in that 5 minutes alone?" My Friend: "Why is he carrying two machine guns?" Me: "Why not?" Later: My friend: "Do you understand this?" Me: "I understand machine-guns and explosions."My friend: "I don't get it, but those cadavers fly a lot..." Got the idea yet? I think 'Heroes Shed No Tears' was Woo's first film in the explosive style has since become famous for. I've seen some of his early kung-fu and comedy movies, but this is earliest Woo film I've seen where there were more explosions than words spoken in the movie. Awesome.Chan Chung (Eddy Ko) leads a group of Chinese mercenaries in capturing a Thai drug-lord. Capturing him easily enough, the Chinese mercenaries find themselves on the run from angry drug-runners, a corrupt Thai army unit (whose officer is missing an eye thanks to Chung), and a group of native hunters hired by the Thai soldiers. Ohohoh, there'll be plenty of blood and explosions before this one is half over.Essentially, 'Heroes Shed No Tears' is an old kung-fu film, replacing kung-fu with explosives and machine guns. There's a hell of a lot of people shooting and blowing stuff up, much like the old kung-fu films where there was a hell of a lot of kung-fu, and not much else. Most of the time that may have been used to develop the plot is used to blow stuff up, which I guess does kind of further the plot by allowing the characters to move to the next scene, blow something up, and then move to the scene after that. Most of the characters are cannon fodder, while Chung and his son play out the movie as if it were 'Lone Wolf with Cub', replacing swords with guns. Awesome'Heroes Shed No Tears' is so mindlessly violent that even the most hardcore might get bored after a while, but it was so explosively compelling and awesome enough to entertain me. Woo fans should really check this out - 8/10Awesome count: The word 'awesome' was used three times in this review.

There was a film that I saw Just the other day And I sat there in awe As it blew me away. It was made by John Woo Who is now a sell out His fans he does screw As the cash they shell out. So get a six-pack Full of cold, frosty beers And then sit back For Heroes Shed No Tears Watch with devotion This huge action feast With enough blood to fill an ocean To say the frickin' least Our heroes in this tale Are a group of Mercs Who blast folks all to hell 'Specially drug lord jerks There's fighting, there's stabbing There's nuking, there's looting There's biting, there's grabbing There's puking, there's shooting Punches are thrown Black soldiers are eaten Eyeballs are sewn Children are beaten A fight goes on With nails and a tire Our hero loses his son Almost in a fire There's tons of dying But where the film falters Is all the damn crying Like it was Barbara Walters When our hero does cry It gets really lame For the movie does lie With its very own name But please do not fret It does little harm And I'll make you a bet About the scene with the arm If you do not jump When the dude gets the spears Shoved straight up his rump You've drunk too much beers And if you don't find it nice When the hut does explode After the role of a dice Then you're a humorless toad So get off your fat ass And get the hell out of here Cuz you'll have a damn blast With Heroes Shed No Tears

My first exposure to John Woo was THE KILLER. Needless to say, I was impressed. Very. Then A BETTER TOMORROW blew me away (so to speak). By this time, I was hooked. Next came my favorite, HARD BOILED. Woo could do no wrong. Or so I thought. HARD TARGET, while entertaining, was a big step backward as far as I was concerned: missing were the fascinating "gray-area" characters that had helped make the three aforementioned films so memorable. It was watered-down Woo. I won't even mention the films that followed. It was clear that, if I wanted to once again enjoy a John Woo movie, I would have to seek out his earlier work. I searched (if you'll pardon the Kurosawa pun) HIGH AND LOW, but the only copies I could find were washed-out bootlegs at comic book conventions, at ridiculous prices. I finally gave up the chase. The seasons changed. Years passed. Then, by chance, I happened to switch on a cable channel just the other day and there, listed in the night's offerings, was a title I immediately recognized: HEROES SHED NO TEARS. My jaw dropped. I may have fainted. I popped a tape in the vcr and set the timer. Halfway through the movie, the vcr cut off, of its own accord. Had this been one of Woo's later films, I would've hit the ceiling. But this was done BEFORE Woo had mastered the medium. This was very crude filmmaking, of the Old School kung fu movie variety (only with guns). That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but I'd been spoiled by several of his later films (and VERY disappointed by all of his U.S. films). A matter of taste, I suppose, but I'd hoped to discover that Woo had always been the dazzling stylist he became following this film (up until he started making movies in this country, that is). But such was not the case. HEROES SHED NO TEARS isn't a complete waste of time, but it's not vintage John Woo, either. Pity.