Trivia / Bullet in the Head

• California Doubling: The Vietnam exteriors were shot in Thailand, and the interiors were shot in Hong Kong at the Cinema City Studio. It was deemed too expensive to shoot the nightclub shootout in Thailand.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Original: Bloodshed in the Streets
  • English: Bullet in the Head
  • Japan: Wild Bullet
• Deleted Scene: Among the material cut from the film:
  • Ben getting his face scarred with acid by a rival gang. There is a photograph of him talking to his fiancé with a bandage on his face.
  • Ben's mother falls ill, goes to the hospital and he refuses to see her in her dying moments because he doesn’t look good, presumably due to his gang fighting.
  • Mr. Leong forcing the trio to drink urine. Before dragging him upstairs, Paul splashes a glass of urine on him (note that his hair is wet afterwards).
  • A Russian roulette scene during the POW camp sequence involving children pulling the triggers on their captors
• Divorced Installment: The film was originally planned to be a prequel to A Better Tomorrow but a falling out between John Woo and producer Hark Tsui prevented this from happening. Woo reworked the script into what it is today, and Tsui made his own prequel, A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon.
  • A deleted scene has Mr. Leong forcing the trio to drink urine. This was to be the story Mark told in A Better Tomorrow, which was based on an incident that happened to Chow Yun-fat and director Ringo Lam.
• Enforced Method Acting: In order to get a much more stronger reaction out of Tony Leung Chiu-wai for the POW sequence, John Woo wanted tears and went to great lengths to get them. First he got dressed up in an American soldier's costume then he briefed one of his stunt guys to shoot him with an AK47 (loaded with blanks) when the camera started rolling. So that's what happened - surely the last thing Leung was expecting. Woo later on explained that even though the gun was shooting blanks, he was getting shot at close range and was in severe pain. His clothes were torn and he got burns on his body. He ended up rolling around in a puddle in front of Leung. He did this for seven takes (the first being unusable because, instead of tears, Leung registered total shock and astonishment). Since Leung and Woo are close friends, the idea of Woo being gunned down in front of him was enough to elicit the sought after tears.
• Missing Episode: John Woo's original cut was three hours long. Much like with A Better Tomorrow II, he was reluctantly forced to shorten it. He secretly hoped that as soon as he got to Hollywood, he would acquire the rights to his old films (including this one) and put back in all the things that he was once forced to cut. But when he tried to do so, he was told that all the material he had cut, hadn't been preserved, but instead wandered straight into the garbage bin.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The Hong Kong trailer shows some alternate takes and edits of some scenes and three deleted scenes:
  • During the Vietnam protestation sequence one protestor is being clubbed to death on the head by members of the Vietnamese troops while blood is gushing out of his head.
  • The infamous deleted scene where Ben, Frank and Paul are forced to drink urine after Mr. Leong suspects them of wanting to take Sally away from him.
  • An extra part of the Bolero action sequence where Frank, who is armed with two pistols, is shooting at a long array of Vietnamese baddies who are standing in the corridor.
• On-Set Injury: Simon Yam suffered burns to his face while filming the POW sequence.
• Orphaned Reference: Mr. Leong has wet hair when the heroes take him hostage. This is a result of the deleted urine-drinking scene, where Ben pours a glass of urine on his head in revenge.
• What Could Have Been: Chow Yun-fat was originally going to be play Luke, as he was really impressed with the script but John Woo had told him that his character was not the essential character of the story (though a pivotal one nonetheless) and that it might not have complimented his leading man status as it was really a supporting role (or more precisely - fourth leading role).
• Write What You Know: John Woo based much of the film (the first act in particular) on his own experiences growing up in the slums of Hong Kong:
  Our family was so poor [we] had to go to the back of restaurants for leftovers to keep from starving. The place I lived had no trees, no blue skies, no sunshine. There were buildings everywhere. It always rained...when I stepped out the front door into the alley, the junkies would be injecting themselves with heroin...when you turned around there would be people gambling. Beating each other up for ten cents...every time I walked through an alley, I assumed I was going to be beaten up. Growing up in that environment I saw only a cruel and depressed world. I was in hell too long. I tried to work out the ugliness of that world in Bullet..it was an intense experience, but very rewarding for me.
• Write Who You Know: John Woo based Paul and Frank and two friends of his, one who later became a Triad leader and another who became a drug addict.

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