Mad Dog

Mad Dog is the most bad-ass of bad-asses in John Woo's unlimited-ammo cops-and-robbers masterpiece HARD BOILED. Given that HARD BOILED has more bad-ass per foot of celluloid than just about any other film ever made, that's really saying something. Even more impressive when you consider that the character of Mad Dog wasn't even in the script.

During shooting of the film, Woo decided that the primary villain Johnny Wong was not a threatening enough presence. Meanwhile,veteran actor/stuntman Philip Kwok's action scenes were impressing the hell out of everyone... and so the grizzled henchman Mad Dog was born. This genesis is, I think, the reason the character has such resonance--because he's so underwritten Kwok doesn't get to speak a lot of lines; the character exists almost entirely in the actor's physical presence. The quiet man in the melodrama; the one actor in the opera who does not sing.

Woo's camera treats Mad Dog as a hero as often as a villain: striding down the gangway tossing his bike helmet; stalking implacably through a hospital with a shotgun in a flower box; Mad Dog is a consummate gun-for-hire. In a film that is people by uncannily skilled gunmen, Mad Dog has all the best moves--again, probably due to Kwok's stuntwork rather than to any planning by the director or his writing team.

Mad Dog is a born baddie, but he does have a code he follows--more one of professionalism than of honour, I think. When his boss Johnny steps over the line, Mad Dog turns on him. For Mad Dog this is not a shot at redemption; it's just the work of a true professional, trying to clean up the mess of a job gone wrong. It costs Mad Dog his life... but by then he's already made his mark.

The most hard boiled character in HARD BOILED is the one who wasn't even in the script.