John Woo’s Once a Thief

John Woo, a director from Hong Kong, is currently working in North America making criminal dramas with a personal touch which includes humour, gravity, beauty, and a fascinating rhythm. His American career has yet to measure up to his time in Asia. Once a Thief, a pilot for a Canadian TV-series (which has little to do with his feature film of the same name) is, however, a step in the right direction. At first sight, a TV-pilot might seem a curious way back to peek form, but on closer examination it seems quite logical. Woo's films have always used North American television codes, with its dissociation from sex and bad language, though with a liberal approach to violence. Hong Kong has now been swopped for the equally beautiful Vancouver. Canada has a large Cantonese community which gives continuity to the ethnical gallery. It provides, not least, the prerequisites to experiment with cultural clashes. In Once a Thief we once again find the ingredients which John Woo has become so skillful in using: family traditions and loyalty, trust and deceit, cynicism and idealism, love and pride, an unconventional use of slow motion and double-handed gunplay and weapon fetishism. Then there are of course heroic villains - this one looks like a mix between Chow Yun Fat, Christopher Walken and Jerry Seinfeld - and villainous heroes - he's half George Clooney, half Luke Perry - and tough, doll-faced heroines. (''There's no shame in losing to this woman. Never provoke her.'') All done in the best possible taste. Once a Thief also offers romance (not a ménage a trois, but a ménage a quartre, with the ''War of the Roses'' as a true piece de resistance), the complex problems of Hong Kong 97 (Gene Pitney's ''Town without Pity''?), a Rififi-caper including a Rembrandt painting and a 10 000 volt floor, Chandleresque dialogue, a mambo contest and Armani suits. A Persuaders (legendary British 70s TV series, starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis) type concept adds further charm. Plot? Little more than routine pulp, really, bordering on the banal, but in the hands of an indubitable master. This is the first opportunity to experience ''true Woo'' on a big screen in Sweden. For Once a Thief has a fascinating rhythm, moving from bossa nova to Wagner, in the blinking of an eye. JL