Woo's back in action

JOHN Woo, Hong Kong's internationally acclaimed director and the only local star to boast a Hollywood deal, hasn't been behind the camera in more than two years. If it was Hong Kong, his colleagues would be circulating a collection plate. But it's Tinseltown, and Woo has been getting used to the way they do business there.

'It can be horrible,' he says in his offices on the Fox lot. 'You have to be half a politician and half a film-maker to get a movie made here. You just expend energy and time handling stupid political things.

'I have been here a long time now and I've seen so many things; when I watch an American movie I give it more respect because I understand what the director has gone through.' After numerous setbacks and disappointments, a change of agents and a new company, and finally a development deal at Rupert Murdoch's Twentieth Century Fox, Woo is ready to call 'action' again.

The cameras will start rolling later this month in Glen Canyon, near Page, Arizona. And Woo is helming a monster production - a US$51 million (about HK$397 million) movie called Broken Arrow starring two of Hollywood's brightest stars - John Travolta and Christian Slater.

The deals are signed; nothing can stop him now; and he is pleased and relieved to be back behind the cameras.

'Last year we were so close to making Tears of the Sun ; I worked on that for eight months, scouted for locations in Australia and Brazil,' he says.