For a director so celebrated for his masterful urban crime thrillers, in which contemplations on brotherhood and fate are inextricable from violent cop-versus-crook setpieces, it’s a surprise to discover that Johnnie To wasn’t all that interested in making action films to begin with. “It was [producer] Tsui Hark’s fault,” To said of The Big Heat (1988), the first of his many films in that genre. “He told me to do it.”
With this actioner, in which a cop on the verge of retirement must investigate the murder of his former partner, the prolific director had found the cinematic avenue he would keep returning to over the next three decades. But the road to it was a long and bumpy one. To’s debut feature, the wuxia film The Enigmatic Case (1980), was deemed a commercial failure, after which he shifted to television for the next six years, working on miniseries adapted from martial arts novels. A few comedies followed, including a reworking of Billy Wilder’s 1955 rom-com The Seven Year Itch. He was just one of “many, many directors” who worked on The Big Heat, and exited the project before it had even finished, citing a difficult working relationship with Hark, whose instructions were unclear and he, hard to please.
