Before John Woo attained international repute as an action cinema master with such masterpieces such as A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard Boiled, and Face Off, he was going through a low phase where his films weren't working out. It was then that one of his contemporaries, filmmaker Tsui Hark, who was enjoying a golden period at that time, was gracious enough to provide an opportunity to salvage Woo's career. The duo found a way to collaborate with the Hong Kong-based production house Golden Princess, which has backed some of Woo's best films.
In an interview with Variety, Woo called Hark a "good man" who "liked helping the others, so if he saw anyone out of a job who couldn’t get a movie, he supported them.”
On Hark's suggestion, Woo decided to make a family-friendly gangster movie. It was 1986's A Better Tomorrow, produced by Hark, through which Woo got to incorporate some of his filmmaking influences, most notably Jean Pierre-Melville's Le Samourai.
“That was my first auteur film. He encouraged me to put myself into the movie, to make the movie my own. And he let me change all the dialogue, to say what I really wanted to say from my heart,” said Woo, who made his Hollywood debut with the Jean-Claude Van Damme's Hard Target. “Before A Better Tomorrow, I didn’t have much chance to try this kind of a style. Because I never got any support from the studio or anyone, I wasn’t able to experiment.”
Woo also recalls enjoying a "lot of creative freedom" at Golden Princess. “There was a trust between us, so we could do whatever we wanted, so every director, they had a great opportunity to try something new, something they had never done before,” he said.