Netflix’s John Woo movie Manhunt plays like a joyous parody of his action classics
Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review was originally published after Manhunt’s debut at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. It is being reposted to coincide with the film’s premiere on Netflix.
It’s always possible that John Woo could have played the doves straight. The Hong Kong director behind action classics like Hard Boiled and A Better Tomorrow (and later American action movies including Face/Off and Broken Arrow) has turned the image of doves flying across the screen during a firefight into a signature trope, suggesting the end of innocence and the arrival of chaos. But his latest, Manhunt, which premieres on Netflix on May...