The last few action films made by John Woo in Asia before he moved to the US were conspicuously influenced by European and American cinema. 'The Killer' (1989), for example, riffed off Jean-Pierre Melville's 'Le Samouraï' (1967), while 'Bullet in the Head' (1990) put a Chinese spin on Michael Cimino's 'The Deer Hunter' (1978). It was these films, with their marriage of Eastern and Western sensibilities, as well as their baroquely balletic approach to violence in general and gunplay in particular, that made Woo's transition from Hong Kong to Hollywood seem so obvious a step. Yet Woo's Eastern and Western consituencies have rarely come together. Woo started out in Hong Kong as a director not of action but of comedy, and many of the Hong Kong films that built his reputation abroad flopped at home. After the successive Hong Kong failures of 'The Killer' and 'Bullet in the Head' (firm favourites amongst his Western fans), Woo turned to the broad comedy of 'Once A Thief', which was a runaway box-office success at home, but was barely even noticed abroad.
Under the brutal tutelage of Hong Kong crimelord Chow (Kenneth Tsang), street orphans Joe (Chow Yun-fat), Jim (Leslie Cheung) and Cherie (Cherie Chung) have grown up to be daring art thieves, despite the best efforts of kindly police officer Chu (Chu Kong) to keep them on the straight and narrow. Cherie wants to marry Joe and settle down, but Jim and Joe's 'one last job' on the French Riviera goes wrong, and Joe is apparently killed in an explosion as he saves Jim's life. Years later, a wheelchair-bound Joe returns to Hong Kong, determined both to forge a new relationship with Jim and Cherie, who are now married, and to take vengeance on Chow for using and betraying them.
Really 'Once A Thief' ought to be Woo's ultimate crossover triumph (as is suggested by its original Cantonese title, which translates approximately as 'Criss-cross over four seas'). Its first half is set in Paris and the French Mediterranean (Woo's only European location shoot to date), while its second half unfolds in Hong Kong, and it combines both action with comedy and the Western crime caper genre with a very Eastern brand of stuntwork and kung fu. Yet for all its success in Hong Kong as a typical 'Chinese New Year movie' offering something for everyone, it is a film that very few Westerners are likely to enjoy. Hong Kong humour rarely translates well, and all the banter, antics and slapstick in 'Once A Thief' that proved so appealing to Chinese viewers are hard for Anglo-American viewers to endure for very long, if at all – even if there is some compensation to be had in the bursts of hyperkinetic violence that occasionally punctuate the high jinks, and in the final shootout that blends action and physical comedy with genuine inventiveness.
Still, Western devotees of Woo have good reason to be grateful for the existence of this film, even if they may not take much actual pleasure in watching it. For without the considerable profits which 'Once A Thief' made in Hong Kong, Woo would never have been able to finance his next film, 'Hard Boiled' (1992), which is one of his all-time best. And for all its shortcomings, 'Once A Thief' is still infinitely better than its Woo-directed 1996 remake for Canadian television…