The Matrix

Before the Wachowskis wrote a single line of The Matrix, they flew to Hong Kong. John Woo's Hard Boiled — its lobby shootout, its operatic slow-motion, its bodies used as instruments of pure cinematic force — became the template. Yuen Woo-ping, who choreographed every action sequence in The Matrix, had been working in Hong Kong action cinema for two decades. The bullet time isn't science fiction. It's John Woo made digital.