Hard Boiled

Product detailed description

The package includes 2 discs

 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

• Video in Ultra HD (3840 x 2160)
• HDR (HDR10 + Dolby Vision)
• Aspect ratio 1.85:1
• Original Cantonese audio in Dolby Atmos
• Original Cantonese audio in Dolby TrueHD 7.1
• Original Cantonese audio in DTS-HD MA 1.0
• English audio in DTS-HD MA 1.0
• English subtitles (new translation for the Cantonese audio track)
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• BD-100 (triple-layer UHDBD)

Special features

• Brand new audio commentary with director John Woo and film journalist Drew Taylor
• Brand new audio commentary with film historian Frank Djeng
• Archival audio commentary with John Woo and producer Terence Chang
• Archival audio commentary with John Woo, Terence Chang, film critic Dave Kehr and filmmaker Roger Avary
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Original theatrical trailers
• Image gallery

Special features Blu-ray

• Violent Night – brand new interview with John Woo
• Boiling Over – brand new interview with actor Anthony Wong
• No Room for Failure – brand new interview with producer Terence Chang
• Hard to Resist – brand new interview with screenwriter Gordon Chan
• Boiled to Perfection – brand new interview with screenwriter Chan Hing-Ka
• Body Count Blues – brand new interview with composer Michael Gibbs
• Hong Kong Confidential: Inside Hard Boiled – brand new interview with author and Hong Kong cinema expert Grady Hendrix
• Gun-Fu Fever – brand new interview with author Leon Hunt
• Chewing the Fat – brand new interview with academic Lin Feng
• American Cinematheque 2025 Q&A – discussion with John Woo
• The Test of Time – archival documentary featuring John Woo, Terence Chang, editor David Wu and actor / stunt coordinator Philip Kwok
• Archival interviews with actors Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung

Do I get native 4K Ultra HD?

Yes. John Woo's action classic underwent a complete restoration a few years ago, during which the Hong Kong Film Archive took care of cleaning and digitizing the original film negatives. The legendary boutique video label Shout! Factory then took charge of creating the new native 4K master.

However, the British edition goes one step further. The equally famous Arrow Video took the original master from Shout! and gave it a brand-new color grading, which closer matches the original vision of the director and cinematographer, fixing some of the flaws that viewers complained about regarding the Shout! transfer. Naturally, this process also included a completely new encoding of the transfer.

These steps should ensure the best possible presentation of Hard Boiled. One that not only meets modern standards for the audiovisual presentation of cinematic classics, but even vastly surpasses the capabilities of analogue projection—meaning it offers the film in a higher quality than audiences had the chance to see during its original theatrical release. When you consider that Hard Boiled has never even received a proper, widely available Blu-ray release, this is a dream come true for all Asian action cinema enthusiasts.