"I really love James Bond" - John Woo

John Woo got tired of making big budget movies and went back to his roots with the action thriller Manhunt. Expect doves, motorbikes, balletic gunplay and corny dialogue. I caught up with him at the Venice Film Festival following the film's premiere. 

How do you feel about being referred to as legendary by your fans?

"I'm not a legend, I'm just a filmmaker. Thank you, anyway. I like film and I'm not trying to be humble when I say I'm still a student. I like to learn from world cinema. I can learn so many things by watching all kinds of movies."

The beginning and end of Manhunt are steeped in nostalgia for classic cinema. Does this reflect how you feel today?

"Yeah, I like the old-time movies. 1960s and 1970s were the best years for cinema. There were so many great masters and so many great movies, and so many great creations - they give us so much inspiration. Now movies seem a bit empty. I love European films, though. I think they're much better than Hollywood."

The original Manhunt movie from 1976 was very serious, very masculine, and you have added a lot of humour and two female assassins. What was the thinking behind your version?

"Since we couldn't get the rights to the old movie we made it from the original novel [Hot Pursuit by Juko Nishimura]. It's got the same storyline, but because we couldn't do anything from the old movie it allowed us to make up some new scenes and gave us so much freedom. We could do whatever we liked and I used it to go back to my old style. The original movie was a little too serious; I like to make action with more comedy."

You do seem to be consciously looking back to your early films here, perhaps referencing The Killer and Hard Boiled. Did you make Manhunt for your fans?

"For the fans, and also for myself. I had made too many big-budget movies and I got fed up. When a few of my big-budget movies became hits, I became established as a big-budget film director, and I never liked it. The more money you get the more pressure you have, and it takes away the joy of making films. All you do is deal with the numbers, with the budget, and it's no fun. Everybody kept saying about 'the numbers, the numbers', and it wasn't about the shot any more. I hated it. I wanted to go back to a much smaller kind of film and do something like The Killer: a thriller. With Manhunt I had more creative freedom to do that."

So did you fall out of love with filmmaking for a while and need to find a way to fall back in love with it?

"Yes, and I did it with this film. And future projects will do the same thing. So my next project is an American production and kind of like a Killer-type story. We're going to be shooting in European countries." 

You made Manhunt in Japan. Was it a good place to work?

"I love the Japanese crews. We used 90 per cent Japanese on the film. They are very professional. They can work 12-16 hours a day without any complaint. They enjoy the filmmaking and also are very warm, but sometimes it is very hard to tell what they are thinking, because their expression doesn't change. I was so amazed about the people there, though. When we needed a lot of extras for big scenes, people volunteered. And they brought in their own costumes, no matter what kind of scene. I was so moved. But I would say it's not easy to shoot a movie in Japan because there's so many rules. It's hard to shoot any scene on a busy street. Even a little busy street, we had to shoot a scene in different places." 

Manhunt feels like a John Woo greatest hits movie. There's car chases, knife fights, fist fights, people on motorcycles, doves. Is there any particular action scene that you especially liked doing?

"I like the jet ski chase on the river and the two men with two guns. When they are handcuffed together and have only got one hand left and they're each holding a gun and shooting at the same time, it looks pretty much like one man with two guns."

How do you work with your action choreographer? Were the scenes you mentioned your idea?

"Mostly they're my idea. When I was younger I choreographed all the action by myself. I could jump up on the table and dive on the ground. In the old time, for some of the Hong Kong movies, some directors, when they didn't know how to shoot the action, they gave the scene to the action director to do it, and it became two different styles. I didn't want to see that happen in my films so I controlled everything and designed everything. Even the camera work and editing, I did it all myself. In the meantime I still cared about my actors. The actors I've worked with, like Chow Yun Fat and John Travolta, none of them was a real fighter. Tom Cruise was a little better. And Nicolas Cage. But I still care about the image, how they hold a gun, how they fight, what they wear, and I did it all by myself because I know how to make actors look good. I know how to create a hero. So that's why I needed to care about everything. I even designed the action for the female heroes."

After Manhunt I would love to see a James Bond movie directed by you.

"You know, I really have been thinking about making one, if I have a chance. I met the producer many, many years ago. They were interested in me making one, but somehow I didn't. But I am still looking for it. I really love James Bond."

You have a scene with doves in Manhunt, which I first saw years ago in your film The Killer. What first inspired you to use doves, and do they mean anything?

"It was by coincidence. When we were shooting the ending scene [for The Killer] on a church set, the movie was so heroic and so romantic that I just tried to find a way to show the true spirit of the two guys - the cop and the killer. They both had been misunderstood by the world, so I thought about what kind of montage shot I could use to show their real heart. All of a sudden I said, 'Oh, let's get some white doves. When our hero is being shot, or dying or something, I will cut in to the white dove flying over a candle, and when the two shots are linked together, it will let the audience feel their real hearts. It will be beautiful.' It worked pretty well, but it wasn't easy to shoot. We did one shot and the doves flew away. So we had to buy new ones every day. Anyway the shot was so good, it became one of my trademarks."

Before you made films, you actually wanted to become a Christian minister. Is there a connection with the doves there, too?

"Yes. In the old time, when I was younger, I worked with a church. Every week there was a new theme and I used to draw the poster for them, and I usually used a white dove as a main theme."

In Manhunt the hero is a lawyer. What do you know about these people?

"I have a good lawyer friend, and of course I know the business. But for our new story, using a lawyer meant we wouldn't get into trouble with the politics, like if we made him a military guy. The main thing for me in the film is the friendship. I tried to send a message that even though we come from different cultures, and there's something unhappy between the Japanese and Chinese, we can work together. That's why I shot it in a humorous and fun way. I tried not to take things too seriously. Life is too short. We should find a way to appreciate each other, not hate each other."