Why you hate John Woo's directing

I just wanted to see how many People hate john woo and his terrible movies and why.

as for my part only have two words
[l]Wind Talkers[/l]

Directors are a lot more creative with a low/lowish-budget. Woo's early films like The Killer and Hard Boiled were great. But when he started making American films with big budgets, he kinda lost his edge. Face/Off was pretty good, but all the others (especially Windtalkers) were crap. John Woo should make more films that aren't just trying to cash some huge bucks at the Box Office. I hear that he's directing the upcoming video-game adaptation Metro. Which will definately have a huge budget, and probably be *****.

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I'm just watching Face/Off at the moment, and it did just remind me of how awful his continuity and realism can be.

For example...
Travolta's charging towards Cage's on-rushing plane, and yet when he's forced to swerve round it, he immediately spins his armoured jeep round and keeps up with it, going faster than any of the police vehicles on its tail. That immediately destroys suspension of disbelief. (along with a set of other annoying discrepancies)

But that said, he immediately reminds me that this is larger-than-life 'locura' with the explosively ridiculous shoot out in the hanger, and he just sweeps you up in that aspect. With the massive golden sparks flying off everything, the slow-mo to flash-to-and-fro pace changes, the ludicrous near-limitlessness of the action, and the final classic face off.

I saw most of Bullet in the Head the other day, which reaffirmed this feeling of aggravatingly jarring continuity (which i identify with a lot of Hong Kong editing/story-telling), combined with some very smooth action. But it convinced me he's got one other thing going for him...

I thought at first that Woo couldn't handle storylines (either the emotional content or the socially-pertinant aspects), but i've decided to an extent that he can, and that his films would fail without this ability. Bullet in the Head is a good example coz it covers some massive issues, like cultural change in Hong Kong and Vietnam in the sixties, and its influence on individuals (it helps that he had Tony leung, who's a great actor in my book).

The only other film i've seen, MI2, at least has a reasonably 'heavy-weight' theme - i.e. the mis-use of novel technologies (and i thought the way individuals were affected by it, amongst their own emotional struggles, was pretty reasonable for an action flick.)

There are also some intriguing takes on the psyche's of cops and criminals in Face/Off, and the leading actors are much better than the standard action flick types.

I'd say i actually forgive Woo his failings overall.

(Incidently, i've just noticed all those films have some form of disfigurement as well. Maybe that should be added to the doves 'trademark'? )

Apparently John Woo likes to stand close to the explosions. The view is pretty good from there, and the energy's potent (just don't expect it to illuminate things with a huge amount of subtlety ).

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John Woo is an action master, forget Hollywood and everything else about his films, his action set pieces are fantastic

I think you have to see a better part of Woo's filmography before you can judge how good he is, Mr. Blue.

I have to agree that there's something amiss with John Woo in the big budget Hollywood arena. I grew up with John Woo's earlier films (better Tommorow 1 and 2, Killer, Hardboiled, etc) which are excellent, and you don't mind the melodrama in it. In his Hollywood movies, the melodrama just sticks out too much. He needs to progress a little, maybe retain his action directing, change up some of his dramatic directing. But overall, I definitely don't hate John Woo, i still think he's great