John Woo's 1990 film "Bullet in the Head" was released in a drastically compromised form, with significant material lost to circumstances beyond the director's control. Originally written as a three-hour semi-autobiographical prequel to his acclaimed film "A Better Tomorrow," the studio forced it to be cut down to two hours to maximise theatrical screenings per day. The film laboratories in Hong Kong subsequently disposed of all the cut footage and original negatives during their annual cull, making restoration impossible despite Woo's attempts to recover the material.

Although the film initially flopped at the box office in 1990, it has since been recognised as a critical favourite and is often compared to Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter." Woo had spent the 1970s and early 1980s making martial arts comedies before breaking through with "A Better Tomorrow" in 1986, which established him as a serious filmmaker. The lost material reportedly included significant mother-and-son storylines and Vietnam War sequences focusing on the character played by Simon Yam, content Woo felt would have been essential to his original vision.