Trivia for
Dip huet seung hung (1989) More at IMDbPro »

• Director Trademark: [John Woo] [reflection] Jeffrey sees a reflection of the thug in his sunglasses on the boat docks, an in the window of his apartment.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Woo] [hospital]
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Woo] [guns] Jeffrey holds two guns in his hit at the start of the movie, and in the finale at the church. Eddie Wong also holds two guns at once.
  
  
• In the first version with English subtitles, nearly everything in the film, including dialogue, the song, and characters' names, was mistranslated. For example, Chow Yun Fat's character is named Ah Jong, not Jeff or John. Currently, the only accurate English-subtitled version is the UK DVD release by Hong Kong Legends.
  
  
• Initially, Golden Princess did not want to make the movie, but Chow Yun-Fat (the studio's top star) insisted that it be made. Chow was also instrumental in bringing in Chu Kong. Chu had not performed in a movie since the 1970s and the studio was hesitant to use him, but he and Chow were good friends after having worked on some television shows together. Chow wanted Chu to play the part of Li, but Chu thought he was too old. Woo suggested that they bring in his friend Danny Lee, who at one time wanted to be a cop and had already made a name for himself playing both police officers and gangsters. Chow had previously worked with Lee on a small film in the early 1980's called The Executor (aka Killers Two) and Ringo Lam's gangster classic City on Fire, and agreed with Woo that he would be a perfect fit for the part of Li.
  
  
• The scene where Jeff beats up Jennie's would-be attackers in the alley was tough for Chow Yun-Fat, who doesn't like violence. Woo wanted hard hits, but Chow had trouble at first. After some coaching from Woo, Chow was able to muster up anger to make the scene more convincing. In fact, it became too convincing, as the stuntmen had to tell Chow to pull his punches a bit after one of them got hurt. Chow got hurt himself during the filming of the church shootout, when a piece of plaster cut his face, missing his eye by an inch. You can see the cut during the part where Jeff and Li talk before leaving the church.
  
  
• All of the guns in the film are real. Because of Hong Kong's very strict gun laws, they had to be specially imported, and their use on-set was closely monitored. The gunfights in the streets of Hong Kong drew complaints from residents. Many local police officers are John Woo fans, and they usually let him keep filming. The shootout on the tram caused chaos in the Causeway Bay district; people thought a real robbery was going on. Woo had to talk to the Police Superintendent himself before he was allowed to resume filming.
  
  
• Because it was so hard to get permits, some of the footage for Tony Weng's assassination scene was shot under the pretense that Woo was doing a documentary about Hong Kong's annual Dragon Boat race. Woo shot the bulk of the footage five months earlier, and brought in a small crew later to fill in the gaps. Woo ended up editing the scene himself, which took 3 weeks. Woo is a huge fan of musicals, and tried to think of the sequence as a musical number or dance sequence. He even edited it in time to the soundtrack.
  
  
• Tsui Hark was extremely unhappy with this film and wanted to have it completely recut. For example: Tsui felt that the focus of the movie should be on the cop instead of the killer. Therefor, he wanted the film to start with the scene that introduces the cop. The shootout in the restaurant, during which the killer blinds Sally Yeh, was to be completely cut and only inserted in flashbacks later in the movie. Neither Woo nor editor David Wu were going to reedit the film to Tsui's demands and due to a tight schedule (The Killer was going to premiere in Taiwan in a short time and some 100 cinemas had already booked the film), Hark didn't have the time to mess with the film. The Killer was a huge success when it premiered in Taiwan, which made Hark so furious that he (allegedly) threw things out of his office window.
  
  
• Jeff and Li's "Mexican standoff" in Jennie's apartment was inspired by Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969). Woo notes on the Fox Lorber DVD commentary that Mad magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" also played a part in constructing this scene.
  
  
• Woo improvised all of the action sequences on the set, with the actors, stuntmen and stunt director. He never used storyboards, partly to prevent his ideas from being stolen, partly because, according to the DVD commentary, Woo prefers to "work as an artist, like a painter. I want to show where my mood takes me." When Woo planned non-action scenes, he often changed things at the last minute. For instance, most of the dialogue in the apartment when Sydney double-crosses Jeff was improvised.
  
  
• The film did not do well in Hong Kong because audiences didn't like the allusions to the Tienanmen Square massacre.
  
  
• According to the clock at Jeff's apartment, the time when Sydney double-crosses Jeff is 3.25 AM.
  
  
• Jennie's ballads are in her own voice. Sally Yeh was a popular pop star, and her concert schedule conflicted with the filming schedule. This led to a radical change in the storyline, with her blind at the beginning of the movie and telling the story through flashbacks, and a different ending, with Jennie flying to America for a cornea transplant.
  
  
• Filmed in 92 days, at a cost of 14 million Hong Kong dollars (2 million US dollars). The shootout at the beach house was filmed in 28 days; 20,000 rounds of ammunition were fired. The final shootout at the church took 36 days and 40,000 rounds.
  
  
• Body count: 120.
  
  
• Most of the incidental music is from the film _Red Heat (1988).
  
  
• Woo dedicated this film to Martin Scorsese
  
  
• The statue in the police station (shown before Li's interrogation by his superiors after the tram shootout) is of General Kwan, a soldier from over a thousand years ago whose bravery and loyalty has made him like a god to cops and gangsters alike. The same statue was re-used for the CID Headquarters set in Hard-Boiled.
  
  
• Due to badly mistranslated subtitles, the movie was promoted as a campy action/comedy for its first US run.
  
  

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