Hard Boiled Opening

This is the type of film that you can bag and pack into the cool department straight from the opening titles. It's the celluloid equivalent of the new kid at school managing to score immediate martyr-level appreciation points from the fellow awe-glazed pupils. Its the type of cool that seems almost so textbook it shouldn't warrant anything but scourns of cliches...all leather coats, gnarls, hunched shoulders and anti-authoritarian motives. But then it's the type of cool that doesn't care if its.

It starts off simple. A black screen. The glug of tequila. A black screen. The crackle and cluncker of an opened can. A black screen. The fizzle of poured soda. A black screen. The grasping hand banging the glass sharply against the table. 'Hard Boiled' scrawled in blood-red lettering against a backdrop of the sizzles of the tequila slammer. A man downs the drink.

Sweat glazed and channeling the cruise ship tourist look with his unfastened shirt and dandy-man beige trousers, he wipes his mouth briskly and perches himself onto a stool. And with the tinkering Jazz Club sign in the background and the rocking of his dangling leg, he strings a fine strew of notes from on his clarinet.