To me, the coolest action star ever just might be Chow Yun-Fat. Sure, there have been bigger action stars that maybe had more of an effect on mainstream pop culture, but has anyone ever looked cooler than Chow Yun-Fat wearing a trench coat and sunglasses? I think not. First blasting onto the screen (literally) through his John Woo epics, he was among the Hong Kong actors who initially fled to Hollywood in the late nineties, where he had a fairly successful run in movies like The Replacement Killers, The Corruptor, and supporting roles in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and more. But I think he also got pigeonholed into a different kind of expectation thanks to his starring role in the megapopular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which made many in the West think of him as a martial arts movie star. That wasn’t his thing. Rather, his movies were more about gunplay. While he’s been laying low, only appearing infrequently in Chinese films, he has a huge legacy of classics. Here are ten that are particularly outstanding:
1. Hard-Boiled (1992)
Widely considered one of the greatest action movies of all time, if not the greatest, Hard-Boiled gives Chow Yun-Fat one of his best roles as a hard-bitten, rebellious cop named Tequila in the Dirty Harry mode. He’s up against a Triad boss smuggling in weapons, with him teaming up with a deep-cover cop played by another Hong Kong movie legend, Tony Leung. The action in this film is nearly nonstop, with the last third of the movie a lengthy set piece set in a hospital where the bad guys are storing an armoury. The action in this made John Woo a hot commodity in Hollywood and helped totally change the genre as well as what a modern action film was capable of.
2. The Killer (1989)
I’d wager that without The Killer, we’d have no John Wick, with Chow Yun-Fat’s smooth, well-dressed hit man with a heart of gold setting the standard for the genre. It’s a nuanced, layered role, with Jeffrey tortured by the fact that he’s accidentally blinded a nightclub singer, while also being pursued by a damaged cop (played by Danny Lee) with whom he has more in common than you’d think. The finale, where Jeffrey and the cop team up, is one of Woo’s most celebrated sequences, with it chock-full of religious iconography, doves, and, of course, blown-away bad guys.
3. A Better Tomorrow (1986)
Before A Better Tomorrow, Chow Yun-Fat was considered something of a lightweight, and his career as an actor in Hong Kong was plugging away without much distinction. Woo cast him in a supporting role here as gangster Mark Gor, and the fashion he sports, including sunglasses, a trench coat and a matchstick hanging from the corner of his mouth, started a fashion revolution that even made it to North America. Next to Don Johnson in Miami Vice, no other action star ever had as big of an impact on men’s fashions. The movie itself is a fast-paced, adrenaline-packed gangster flick with some jaw-dropping set pieces, even if it’s not quite as assured as Woo’s later work. It’s the prototype for what was to follow.
4. Full Contact (1992)
While Chow Yun-Fat’s collaborations with John Woo are typically the most celebrated, he also had an important cinematic relationship going with another Hong Kong auteur, Ringo Lam. His films were more hard-edged than Woo’s, and nowhere is that more evident than in Full Contact, which casts Chow as a motorcycle-riding criminal who is double-crossed and left for dead by a psycho killer played by the great Simon Yam. This is a really unique action flick for Chow, with it as good as many of his Woo movies, but totally different from a stylistic standpoint, with interesting flourishes, including bullet’s-eye-view shots. The soundtrack is also far above average for a Hong Kong movie of the era.
5. Once a Thief (1991)
In 1990, John Woo had a huge flop with his passion project, Bullet in the Head (I dunno why—it’s a masterpiece). To recover, he wanted to make the most commercial movie possible, so he reteamed two of his A Better Tomorrow stars, Chow Yun-Fat and Leslie Cheung, in this glitzy comedy-action caper. While more lighthearted than Woo’s other movies, Chow gives a loose, funny performance, and the action is pretty potent at times.
6. God of Gamblers (1990)
While Chow Yun-Fat’s movies with John Woo are the ones that are popular in North America and around the world, the star’s most popular Hong Kong movie ever is still God of Gamblers. It’s an exceedingly strange film from a North American perspective, with Chow starring as a slick professional gambler with near-superhuman abilities who loses his memory and becomes childlike when he hits his head. He’s taken in by a Triad tough guy (played by Hong Kong legend Andy Lau), and the film becomes kind of a Rain Man riff, albeit with more gunplay. It was such a huge hit that it received multiple sequels, with two centering around Lau’s character, and another—God of Gamblers Returns—centered around Chow’s. It became one of the highest-grossing movies in Hong Kong history. Twenty years later, Chow reteamed with director Wong Jing for another series of quasi-sequels that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in China.
7. A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987)
While no one would deny the fact that this sequel to A Better Tomorrow is a bit of a mess from a narrative point of view, it has some of the best action scenes ever put to film. The final showdown is masterful—and if you check out Shout/Arrow’s new 4K versions of the film, you can catch an even longer workprint version that has loads more action and is somewhat revelatory.
8. The Replacement Killers (1998)
No American director ever got Chow Yun-Fat’s overall vibe like Antoine Fuqua. It was an important film for both of them, with it being Chow’s North American debut but also Fuqua’s first movie as a director. Chow’s English was pretty poor at this point, so the dialogue is kept to a minimum, but Fuqua was incredibly proficient at staging action, so The Replacement Killers wound up becoming a cult hit. It paved the way for him to become one of the top mainstream directors of his era, and he still looks back at the movie fondly (whenever I interview him, I mention it off camera and he gets a big kick out of it).
9. The Corruptor (1999)
In the year between The Replacement Killers and The Corruptor, Chow Yun-Fat worked hard to perfect his English, and as a result, he was able to star in this more character-based action flick, in which he played a corrupt cop partnered with a younger detective played by Mark Wahlberg. It’s very much in the mode of the kinds of movies Chow made with Ringo Lam in Hong Kong, and it’s a well-done thriller that deserves a lot more love – thankfully its getting a nice 4K from Arrow Video.
10. City on Fire (1987)
Ringo Lam’s City on Fire is perhaps most famous now as the film that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Fans who watch it now might be surprised at how sparse the action is, with it really more of a character-based drama, where Chow’s undercover cop finds himself sympathizing with the high-end thieves he’s supposed to take down. It’s a fairly grim story and very evocative of 1980s Hong Kong—although avoid the English dub at all costs.
Did I miss any of Chow Yun-Fat’s classics? Let us know in the comments.
