In action cinema, there is often a singular (usually male) hero. This man would use his brawn and combat expertise to quell whatever threat lay before him, emerging from a cacophony of explosions and gunfire as a lone and largely unblemished victor. From the multiple iterations of James Bond to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando (Mark L. Lester, 1985) to Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo sequels, a lone, trained, capable and resourceful hero has often saved the day. However, what changes when a partner is added to the mix? Rather than conducting individual displays of macho prowess, teamwork is required, men need to build trust among each other, and bonds of brotherhood are forged through adversity.
To examine how masculinity manifests and is demonstrated within this sort of dynamic, I will analyse two action films from a similar time period but against very different backdrops: Hollywood’s Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, 1987) and Hong Kong’s A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986). Both films feature a central pairing of male characters, with Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) in Lethal Weapon, and Sung Tse-Ho (Ti Lung) and Mark Lee (Chow Yun-fat) in A Better Tomorrow. A multitude of intersecting venues and vehicles for masculinity are displayed within the films: through relationships with family, work, violence, and each other. By examining the films individually and then comparatively, we will see how masculinity can be coloured by location and culture, as well as discovering what aspects of what it is to be “a man” seemingly transcend borders.
The Films
In Lethal Weapon, police sergeants Riggs and Murtaugh, working in homicide, investigate the death of a prostitute. The investigation uncovers a large-scale drug-smuggling operation which the two work together to bring down. Their relationship gets off to a rocky start, with the younger Riggs seen as something of a loose cannon, suicidal and rash, whereas Murtaugh is a veteran of the force, nearing retirement and looking forward to a quiet post-police family life. Riggs and Murtaugh are separated in many ways: their race (Riggs Caucasian, Murtaugh African-American), their age, their family (Riggs is a childless widower, Murtaugh married with three children), and their personalities (Riggs is more brash and impulsive, Murtaugh measured and subdued). What forces them together is their work, and as they work together they build trust, rapport and understanding through shared adversity.
In A Better Tomorrow, on the other hand, rather than being police officers Ho and Mark both work for a criminal organisation. Ho is arrested and imprisoned after a deal gone wrong, and Mark is shot in the leg after seeking revenge for Ho’s capture. After finishing his prison sentence, Ho wishes to start a new, crime-free life, but his ties to the syndicate and their poor treatment of the now crippled Mark forces him into joining with Mark to confront his past and defeat the new head of the crime syndicate. Ho and Mark are tied together by their loyalty and friendship towards each other, and Ho’s ties to the syndicate are tested and ultimately severed by their shabby treatment of Mark and the violence it propagates on Ho’s family. A Better Tomorrow is the template for the heroic bloodshed subgenre of action films, in which “the heroes all adhere to a chivalric code of honour in which the sacred bonds of friendship and loyalty are far more important than law and justice”1
Already it can be seen that there are both differences and similarities between the two films: Lethal Weapon concerns two male characters forced together through their occupation who come to love and rely on each other, whereas in A Better Tomorrow’s narrative the two main male characters relationship is already close-knit, and it is their loyalty and love for each other that forces Ho to overcome his reticence and drives him to join Mark in purgative violent action. In both films though, it is the characters’ proficiency in violence that allows them to overcome their adversaries.
Historical Contexts
In considering the types of action films which were popular with U.S audiences in the 1980s,“spectacular narratives about characters who stand for individualism, liberty, militarism, and a mythic heroism”2, it is clear to see that Lethal Weapon fits neatly within this definition. With its individualistic main characters and their military prowess (both protagonists are veterans of the Vietnam War), and their heroism in destroying a drug-smuggling operation within the height of America’s war on drugs. It is interesting to note that the drug smugglers themselves have distinct ties to the Vietnam War. The ringleader is retired General Peter McAllister (Mitchell Ryan), and many of his men formerly worked as special forces operatives during the Vietnam War including head henchman Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey). In a sense, Riggs and Murtaugh are exorcising the demons of the Vietnam War (both institutional and personal) through their participation in the war on drugs, as well as reconstituting their 80s masculinity through violence in the face of the more damaged, introspective and counter cultural feminine man of the 60s and 70s. Mr. Joshua and General McAllister are akin to a mirror-Riggs and mirror-Murtaugh, respectively, each a similar age and background to the other, and both are individually defeated by each of Riggs and Murtaugh, another symbolic vanquishing of demons. Riggs and Murtaugh are part of the social order of America, and in dismantling the drug operation they are working to the supposed betterment of Reagan’s average American.
Hong Kong of the late 1980s is an entirely different prospect. Rather than an individualistic, strictly capitalist society headed by a populist figure seeking to dilute the interference of big government a la Reagan’s America, Hong Kong existed as a much more paradoxical entity. In 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration established that Hong Kong was to be returned to China’s control, but the handover would not take place until 1997. So, when A Better Tomorrow was released in 1986, Hong Kong’s identity and its very sovereignty were in a state of fluid flux. It’s only appropriate then that Hong Kong cinema of this period is intimately concerned with identity, border-crossing and characters who can never be sure of where others’ loyalties lie.
A Better Tomorrow is no different in this respect: Ho finds it difficult to reconcile his criminal past with his hopes for a better future, the failed crime deal that leads to his arrest takes place in Taiwan (far from home, and itself a territory subject to much dispute), and the crime organisation he used to work for’s distrust of his wish for a crime-free life leads to their attacks on Ho’s family and closest friend, Mark. When the future is so uncertain, it is difficult to cement one’s identity and exist in any concrete sense, so the solution is to look backwards in time, to that code of chivalry and honour mentioned which harkens back to Chinese martial arts films of the 1960s and 70s: “Woo’s films are similarly nostalgic for the commitment to honor and chivalry promoted by kung fu, and he incorporates these values into his own stories about the triads in contemporary Hong Kong”3, and “both Ho and Mark represent traditional Chinese values of loyalty and friendship under threat from contemporary consumer capitalism.“4
Masculinity, Violence, and the Body
Ho and Mark’s masculinity is linked explicitly to their prowess in violence, a “model of masculinity that combines an understated emotional intensity with the physical strength and expertise of a deadly killer.”5 The masculine body itself is not voyeuristically displayed in order to emphasise masculinity, but serves as an uneroticised vehicle for that ultra-masculine ideal of proficiency in violence, reinforcing the idea that violence can be used as a means of proving a man’s masculinity when no other options are available.6
In Lethal Weapon, however, the male body is quite a bit more visible. In each of their introductory scenes, both Riggs and Murtaugh appear completely nude. Riggs is shown in his trailer, waking up, getting out of bed and immediately beginning drinking and smoking, whereas Murtaugh is shown in the bath and is surprised by his wife and children who enter with a birthday cake. Both scenes do serve a narrative purpose, with Riggs it emphasises his isolation and fragile mental state, and for Murtaugh makes the audience aware of his age, and insecurity as his daughter tells him his beard makes him look old, so he shaves it by the time of his next scene. The scenes themselves do have narrative purpose, but there is no explicit need for the characters to have been nude during them. What their nudity does is underlines their masculine bodies, as each man is muscular and fit.
Family,Brotherhood, and Touch
Family is an important aspect of both films. In Lethal Weapon, Murtaugh is a stereotypical family man: wife and three children, house in the suburbs, boat, and dreams of a quiet retirement. Riggs, on the other hand, is broken by his lack of family, his wife having died in a car accident before the events of the film. In A Better Tomorrow, Ho’s brother Kit (Leslie Cheung) is a police officer, causing Ho to keep his criminal activity a secret from him. Ho’s father, however, is aware of his criminal life, and this leads to the syndicate attacking his family and killing his father in order to send Ho a message and keep him quiet. Mark also acts as something of a non-biological brother for Ho, and it is their love and affection for each other that drives the redemptive violence of the film’s climax. Although family is important for both films, the way it manifests is quite different. In Lethal Weapon, Riggs and Murtaugh begin as wary strangers, but Riggs becomes integrated into Murtaugh’s family through investigating the film’s central case. The drug-ring kidnap Murtaugh’s daughter, and the two work together to rescue her using their prowess in matters of violence. In A Better Tomorrow, the ties of family and fraternity are firmly established from the outset, and are what drive the men to action against the criminal syndicate.
Violence is the main vehicle for the men of both Lethal Weapon and A Better Tomorrow to demonstrate their masculinity. Much is made of Riggs’ talents for marksmanship and martial abilities, he is the “Lethal Weapon” of the film’s title. In A Better Tomorrow, Mark’s entire identity is tied up in his skills as a gunslinger, and when he is shot in the leg and unable to move as freely as before, his fall from grace is drastic and immediate. He quickly goes from a valued triad hitman to a physically disabled janitor, limping and meek. Mark no longer sees himself as a man, he is ashamed of his disability and loses belief in his abilities, instead ridiculing himself when Ho meets him after leaving prison. However, by the film’s end, Mark is shown to overcome his disability and re-embrace his proficiency for violence once more, as he unites with Ho and Kit in a spectacular gun battle in the film’s climax to take down the crime syndicate he and Ho used to be part of.
What’s most interesting in these final sequences is the physicality and emotionality underpinning them. The battle takes place at a dockyard, and Ho initially persuades Mark to escape on a speedboat before the shootout begins, but Mark returns shortly after hearing the gunfire, driven back by his loyalty and love for his friend. When he returns and comes to Ho’s aid, guns blazing, Mark and Ho share a look and a smile, their love and friendship for each other implicitly understood by the audience through these two shots: “The shoot-outs are moments of spectacle, points at which the narrative hesitates, comes to a momentary halt, but they are also points as which the drama is finally resolved, a suspense in the culmination of the narrative drive.”7
Both Ho and Mark are wounded in the shoot-out, with Mark dying from his injuries. Ho’s grief is clear to see as he grabs Mark’s body in anguish. Physicality and touch are very important in establishing their connection and platonic intimacy, they are very comfortable with each other. Literally as the film’s introductory credits roll we see Mark and Ho laughing in the back of a car on their way to a job, and Mark licks his finger and playfully wipes it over Ho’s face. We can compare this directly to Lethal Weapon, when Murtaugh beats at Riggs body with his hands after an explosion to dampen the spread of any flames. Riggs ridiculous reaction to this is typical 80s machismo, using an f-slur and accusing Murtaugh of homosexuality. This interaction is indicative of the altogether more suspicious and distanced stance towards male-on-male physicality of any form in Hollywood action films, compared to the unabashed platonic intimacy of the Hong Kong films of John Woo. This facade is seen to crumble somewhat by the film’s end though, as Riggs and Murtaugh embrace at the film’s end without any accompanying nonsensical homophobic quips. However, there is still some sense of boundary here, as we never see this sort of physicality engaged in in any playful sense as with Mark and Ho. For Mark and Ho, physical touch is commonplace (lighting each other’s cigarettes, engaging in wrestling and horseplay together when out and about etc), but for Riggs and Murtaugh they only breach that boundary when things have gotten serious (after explosions, after Riggs is shot, or after the climactic fight with Mr. Joshua).
Contested Masculinity
Competition is a further important aspect of masculinity in Lethal Weapon which does not feature in A Better Tomorrow. Riggs is at the heart of this competition, and two scenes mark this need for Riggs to prove his masculinity most of all: a shooting range scene with Murtaugh, and the final fist-fight with Mr. Joshua.
In the shooting range, Murtaugh demonstrates his proficiency with a handgun, shooting paper targets alongside Riggs. Upon getting his target back and examining his results, he seems pleased with himself and his accuracy. In response to this, Riggs moves his target as far back as it can go, and shoots the shape of a perfect smiley face into the target, completely upstaging Murtaugh’s effort. There is no comparative scene for this in A Better Tomorrow, as there is no competition between Mark and Ho, or need for one-upmanship. Both are incredibly proficient in gun skills but feel no need to prove it to each other, using it only to further their shared goals. Riggs fight with Mr. Joshua is similarly needless, coming after Mr. Joshua has been apprehended. Rather than arresting him and sending him to the station, Riggs challenges Mr. Joshua to a one-on-one battle, as if to prove definitively who is the manliest of all. This proverbial pissing contest only serves to stroke egos, and also to allow the audience to savour Riggs as the bad-ass to end all bad-asses, cementing him truly as a “Lethal Weapon”.
While Lethal Weapon and A Better Tomorrow both rely heavily on violence to promote their characters’ masculinity, each film is concerned with different aspects of masculinity. For Lethal Weapon, there is a need to prove oneself and to belong to family, and for A Better Tomorrow, loyalty is the best determination of what it is to be a man. While enjoyment of spectacle is seemingly universal, what makes a “man” is not, with different standards depending on time and place, something I feel these two films exemplify with great aplomb. Beyond that, they’re both just great action fun, as well!
- Enns, A. (2000). The spectacle of disabled masculinity in John Woo’s “heroic bloodshed”; films. Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 17(2), 137-145. ↩︎
- Jeffords, S. (1994). Hard bodies: Hollywood masculinity in the Reagan era. Rutgers University Press. ↩︎
- Sandell, J. (1996). Reinventing masculinity: The spectacle of male intimacy in the films of John Woo. Film Quarterly, 49(4), 23-34. ↩︎
- Williams, T. (1997). Space, place, and spectacle: The crisis cinema of John Woo. Cinema Journal, 67-84. ↩︎
- Sandell 1996 ↩︎
- Edley, N. (2017). Men and masculinity: The basics. Taylor & Francis. ↩︎
- Neale, S. (1983). Masculinity as spectacle. Screen, 24(6), 2-17. ↩︎
