All posts tagged chow yun fat

PROJECT GUTENBERG (2018) review

Project Gutenberg is Felix Chong’s second solo project – that is, away from Alan Mak – after the underrated triad comedy Once a Gangster nine years ago. It follows Lee Man (Aaron Kwok), a painter of mediocre inspiration who discovers that he’s peerless at copying works of art. Soon, he’s hired by Ng Fuk Sang (Chow Yun Fat), aka Painter, the charismatic and ruthless head of a money-counterfeiting gang. Lee quickly becomes an invaluable part of the gang, and though he’s repelled by Painter’s violent ways, he sticks around in the hopes that the rewards showered upon him by the leader, will help him win back the love of his old flame Yuen Man (Zhang Jingchu), a now successful artist. At the same time, the counterfeiting gang is in the crosshairs of Inspector Ho (Catherine Chow) and her team.

(more…)

2 Comments

by LP Hugo on August 2, 2019 • Permalink

Posted in Film Reviews

Tagged aaron kwok, alex fong chung sun, chow yun fat, felix chong, joyce feng, liu kai chi, nicky li chung chi, zhang jingchu

Posted by LP Hugo on August 2, 2019

https://asianfilmstrike.com/2019/08/02/project-gutenberg/

COLD WAR 2 (2016) review

Four years after their directing debut Cold War became the top film of the year at the Hong Kong box-office as well as an awards magnet (8 HK Film Awards and 3 additional nominations), Sunny Luk and Longman Leung finally deliver on its final cliffhanger: after implementing operation ‘Cold War’ to rescue five police officers that had been hijacked with their armored van, and arresting Joe Lee (Eddie Peng), the main suspect and the son of Deputy Police Commissioner M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka Fai), newly promoted Police Commissioner Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) is contacted by mysterious masked men who have just kidnapped his wife, and want to switch her for Joe Lee. Putting his career at stake, Lau agrees on the terms, but the exchange takes a disastrous turn when a bomb goes off in a subway station where he’s escorting the handcuffed suspect. The latter is freed by an accomplice, and while Lau’s wife is rescued mostly unscathed, the whole incident draws judiciary scrutiny on the beleaguered commissioner, who is believed to have abused power. Part of the jury in an impeachment proceeding against Lau is Oswald Kan (Chow Yun Fat), a retired high court judge and independent member of the judicial council, who is being courted by a consortium of high-ranking officials conspiring to control the whole system, and whose ranks the soon-to-be retired M.B. Lee seems to have joined…

(more…)

1 Comment

by LP Hugo on July 2, 2016 • Permalink

Posted in Film Reviews

Tagged aaron kwok, chang kuo chu, charlie yeung, chin kar lok, chow yun fat, eddie peng, janice man, tony leung ka-fai, tony yang, waise lee

Posted by LP Hugo on July 2, 2016

https://asianfilmstrike.com/2016/07/02/cold-war-2-2016-review/

PEACE HOTEL (1995) review

Chow Yun Fat’s last film in the pre-Handover Hong Kong film industry before he went on to try his luck in Hollywood, Peace Hotel was directed by regular Johnnie To collaborator Wai Ka Fai, produced by John Woo, and has the feel of a swan song. Indeed Chow Yun Fat’s next Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking film would come almost 20 years later. So it is quite suitable that his character in the film is known only as “the Killer”, echoing arguably the apex of his Hong Kong career and his legendary collaboration with John Woo. The Killer, as a gorgeous black-and-white prologue tells us, once wiped out an entire gang of horse thieves responsible for the death of his wife (Wu Chien Lien). His killing spree led him to an abandoned hotel, where after an experiencing an epiphany he spared the life of the last gang member. 10 years later, the hotel is not abandoned anymore : it has become a safe haven for fugitives and outlaws, run by the Killer himself. In comes Siu Man (Cecilia Yip) a woman who pretends to be the Killer’s long lost wife in order to stay there for free. She is quickly exposed as a fraud, and to make things worse she’s wanted by a vicious gang for killing one of their leaders. When said gang shows up in front of the Peace Hotel, the Killer must choose between upholding his vow to protect anyone seeking shelter in the hotel, at the cost of an all-out war, or delivering Siu Man to the gang, with his growing love for her complicating things further.

(more…)

FLAMING BROTHERS (1987) review

Surfing on the Heroic Bloodshed wave initiated mostly by John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow films, starring one of the genre’s biggest stars in the person of Chow Yun Fat, written by Hong Kong cinema luminaries Wong Kar Wai and Jeff Lau, Joe Cheung’s Flaming Brothers has a pedigree that’s hard to ignore. Chow Yun Fat and Alan Tang star as brothers (in the sense that they’re orphans who grew up in poverty looking after each other) who’ve made it big in the Triads. But while Tang looks to solidify his position and broaden the scope of his operations, Chow simply wants out, having rekindled a childhood love (Pat Ha), a catholic nurse who is averse to violence and the Triad lifestyle. When Tang’s feud with a mob boss (Patrick Tse) escalates irreparably, Chow must choose between love and brotherhood.

(more…)

CITY WAR (1988) review

The poster boy for the game-changing phenomenon that was John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow in 1986 may have been Chow Yun Fat, a moderately famous actor catapulted to icon status, but the real heart of the film was not Chow, it was the friendship between his character and Ti Lung’s. Indeed the pairing of Chow Yun Fat and Ti Lung was so brilliant, their chemistry so complete, it’s no wonder they were reunited just one year after their A Better Tomorrow characters went out in a blaze of glory. Directed by Shaw Brothers veteran Sun Chung (a lesser-known director from that stable but also one of the most interesting), City War is obviously a riff on Lethal Weapon which had come out the year before, and whose pairing of two cops, one by-the-book, one a mad dog, is replicated here, though with an interesting twist. In Lethal Weapon the mad dog cop is a loner, and the by-the-book one is a family man ; here it’s the reverse. Another interesting reversal of expectations is that Chow Yun Fat, whom based on his A Better Tomorrow persona you’d expect to play the loose cannon, here plays Chiu, a cop who likes to play it safe, while Ti Lung is the hot-headed, authority-averse one.

(more…)