Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Leofwine_draca After making his fair share of comedies and martial arts movies in the late '70s and early '80s, John Woo turned his hand to the modern-day action genre with this explosive war thriller which feels like a Chinese version of APOCALYPSE NOW. Whilst his later genre movies have garnered much fame and respect with worldwide audiences, HEROES SHED NO TEARS seems to be unjustly forgotten. This is unfair, a) because it's Woo's most violent film, and b) because it's a great movie. The plot is straightforward and set up within the opening minutes: a squad of soldiers are enlisted to kidnap and transport a Chinese drug lord over the border to a Chinese prison. Unfortunately their journey is anything but simple as they are pursued by hundreds of the dealer's men, and also get chased by an insane wounded Vietnamese Colonel and his troops who enjoy murdering and raping innocent folk.What follows is a film of unrelenting action, dished out with intelligence, grace, and style and a long way from the mindless shoot-em-up antics of the Rambo flicks made in America at the same time; although the two kinds of film do look superficially similar, Woo has the Yanks beaten by a clear distance. His fights are expertly choreographed but he still retains strong characters, tight scripting, and holds the excitement throughout instead of just letting things become repetitive. The cast assembled for this film is uniformly good, especially Eddy Ko's hard man hero who must be one of the most beaten and battered leading characters (come the ending) out there. Lam Ching Ying also deserves attention as the unstoppable, one-eyed madman with a vengeance who hunts for Ko and his men. The film is pretty grim and dark throughout, with one notable exception being a hilarious gambling sequence which provides the much-needed laughs.Although the majority of the action involves large-scale gun battles and explosive weaponry, there's a smattering of kung fu action to appeal to martial arts buffs, especially the savage one-on-one fight between Ko and Ching Ying at the film's finale. HEROES SHED NO TEARS is also an incredibly gory movie, complete with people being impaled, having limbs lopped off, being bloodily shot to pieces, and getting their heads blown open by bullets. The torture scene in which a man's eyes are sewn open is also pretty horrible. The best scene in the film is the attack on the wooden house at around the hour mark, a battle which is incredible, never-ending and beautifully shot. HEROES SHED NO TEARS may not be Woo's best work, but it's up there with the best at least and is a testament to the man's talent. Action movie-making at its most extreme.

Joseph P. Ulibas John Woo's Heroes Shed no Tears (1986) is a sort of homage to the film Man From Deep River. This violent tale also plays tribute to the Lone Wolf and Cub series. Eddy Ko plays a soldier of fortune working for the US Government. Ko and his men are offered US citizenship along with several thousand dollars in cash for their services. All they have to do is take a Drug Lord into custody, that's the easy part. Taking him back to civilization, well that's another story. Ko, his team of mercenaries and child must endure a trip through hell that'll take them through the jungles, running a gauntlet of death.Ching-Ying Lam co-stars as the Vietnamese Officer hellbent on taking Ko alive, no matter what the costs. HSNT is very bloody and dark. Unlike any of Woo's previous films.Highly recommended for John Woo fans.

poe426 My first exposure to John Woo was THE KILLER. Needless to say, I was impressed. Very. Then A BETTER TOMORROW blew me away (so to speak). By this time, I was hooked. Next came my favorite, HARD BOILED. Woo could do no wrong. Or so I thought. HARD TARGET, while entertaining, was a big step backward as far as I was concerned: missing were the fascinating "gray-area" characters that had helped make the three aforementioned films so memorable. It was watered-down Woo. I won't even mention the films that followed. It was clear that, if I wanted to once again enjoy a John Woo movie, I would have to seek out his earlier work. I searched (if you'll pardon the Kurosawa pun) HIGH AND LOW, but the only copies I could find were washed-out bootlegs at comic book conventions, at ridiculous prices. I finally gave up the chase. The seasons changed. Years passed. Then, by chance, I happened to switch on a cable channel just the other day and there, listed in the night's offerings, was a title I immediately recognized: HEROES SHED NO TEARS. My jaw dropped. I may have fainted. I popped a tape in the vcr and set the timer. Halfway through the movie, the vcr cut off, of its own accord. Had this been one of Woo's later films, I would've hit the ceiling. But this was done BEFORE Woo had mastered the medium. This was very crude filmmaking, of the Old School kung fu movie variety (only with guns). That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but I'd been spoiled by several of his later films (and VERY disappointed by all of his U.S. films). A matter of taste, I suppose, but I'd hoped to discover that Woo had always been the dazzling stylist he became following this film (up until he started making movies in this country, that is). But such was not the case. HEROES SHED NO TEARS isn't a complete waste of time, but it's not vintage John Woo, either. Pity.

Bogey Man Heroes Shed no Tears was filmed in 1984/1985 but was released only when the huge success of his next film, A Better Tomorrow, was born. Heroes Shed no Tears is not as philosophical and personal as Bullet in the Head (Woo's most personal film to date, set in Vietnam war), but it is no less fierce. A group of mercenaries is sent to get one drug smuggler, kidnap him and deliver to court. They kidnap him, but get an angry league of the drug boss' men after them in the jungle and so the savage chase and fight for life has begun.The usual elements of Woo are not as primary as in his more recent films, like A Better Tomorrow 1-2, The Killer and Bullet in the Head, but there are similar scenes and segments in this early film, too. Men get killed "with honor" and there are couple of "heroic bloodshed" scenes, too, like the human bomb, for instance. One important element not found too often in Woo's films is that there are many female characters in this film and they are depicted very warmly and lovingly, so Woo definitely can direct females, too, if he wants. The brief love making scene between male and female at one point is very emotional and erotic as the female is so full of love and emotion, and that really tells something about Woo's ability to direct his characters and give them charisma.This film is pretty close to Japanese Babycart samurai films Lone Wolf & Cub from the 1970's. The main character in Heroes Shed no Tears has a son and their relationship is very similar to Ogami Itto's and his son Daigoro's, in Lone Wolf & Cub. I don't think this is any rip off of these Japanese films, but it is obvious that Woo had seen these Japanese films and found inspiration from them. After all, Lone Wolf & Cub films are pretty close to Woo's films in their content and philosophy.The adrenaline amount in Heroes Shed no Tears is incredible as it is hard to think a film more fierce and angry than this. The action scenes are totally unbelievable and Ultra violent, and I was totally stunned at the fight scene near the water/lake/river at the first part of the film. The mayhem is so over-the-top and something never found in Western film. Fast paced action never lets up during the 80 minutes running time of the film. The camera use in these action scenes and other scenes as well is very professional and it is easy to see what kind of talent was hiding in Woo. This is very violent film and definitely wouldn't get the R rating in US. There are hyper bloody gun battles, head shots, stabbings, impalings, choppings and other acts of violence that truly are savage, but still pretty stylish and symbolic, as always in Woo's films. It tells something about his films' characters' values and moral, even though violence this brutal is not without its consequences in his subsequent films. Woo depicts violence, but that doesn't mean he glorifies it. Violence is always bad in Woo's films and that is left for viewer to interpret and there are no easy solutions in his films. So this kind of cinema would never come from some big studio in Hollywood, I think. This kind of cinema is too challenging for mainstream audience. Still, as I mentioned earlier, this is not as symbolic, deep and polished as Woo's subsequent films and also violence is not as symbolic as in his other films, but this was only the beginning and the director was still inventing his cinematic philosophy.Heroes Shed no Tears is very great piece of Hong Kong mayhem cinema, and early work of John Woo. I was very surprised when I watched this since I didn't have any expectations even though I of course knew this was Woo's film. The film is little stupid at times (there are some scenes of usual "humor" often found in Hong Kong films), so I give this 8/10 rating, which I feel is the right for this film, but this is definitely not for the casual and mainstream viewer due to its extreme imagery and attitudes! It would get more stars from me if the film had more content and something more to think about, but still I love this early effort of this great director.