City on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987)

Chow Yun-fat in City on Fire

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Sun Yueh, Danny Lee, Carrie Ng, Roy Cheung, Maria Cordero, Fong Yau, Victor Hon, Lau Kong, Elvis Tsui, Tommy Wong Kwong-leung, Cheng Mang-ha, Parkman Wong. Screenplay: Tommy Sham, Ringo Lam. Cinematography: Andrew Lau. Production design: Chi Fung Lok. Film editing: Wong Ming-lam. Music: Teddy Robin Kwan. 

In Ringo Lam's City on Fire, Chow Yun-fat plays Ko Chow, an undercover cop who wants to leave the force for a less perilous life. An easygoing, antic guy, Chow knows his days are probably numbered in the job and he wants to spend more time with his girlfriend, Hung (Carrie Ng), who keeps threatening to leave him. But his superior officer, Inspector Lau (Sun Yueh), chafing because he's being passed over on the force by a younger inspector (Roy Cheung), persuades Chow to go along with the gang of robbers he's infiltrated for one more heist. City on Fire is a solid cops-and-robbers movie with more characterization and less stylized action than many Hong Kong thrillers, and it helped establish Chow Yun-fat as a star in the genre. 

A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (Tsui Hark, 1989)

Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Anita Mui, Shih Kien, Saburo Tokito, Maggie Cheung Ho-yee, Chen Wai-lun, Andrew Kam, Foo Wang-tat, Nam Yin. Screenplay: Edward Leung, Tai Foo-ho, Tsui Hark. Cinematography: Horace Wong, Yung Chun-wa, Chik Kim-kiy. Art direction: Lu Zifeng. Film editing: Marco Mak, Tsui Hark, David Wu. Music: Lowell Lo, David Wu.

A stand-alone film posing as a prequel, Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III has only the presence of the most charismatic actor in the first two films, Chow Yun-fat, in the role of Mark Lee, to link it with the first two. And the only significant things it adds to the character are explanations of how he learned to shoot and how he got the black duster that he swaggers about in. The plot is summed up in the subtitle, Love and Death in Saigon. It's 1974 and the Vietnam War is coming to its end when Mark goes there to help his uncle (Shih Kien) and cousin, Michael Cheung Chi-mun (Tony Leung Ka-fai), close up shop in Saigon and return to Hong Kong. But he gets in trouble at the airport and has to be helped out by Chow Ying-kit (Anita Mui), a woman with whom he has been flirting. Though Mark finds Kit attractive, it's his cousin Michael who falls hard for her. She, on the other hand, prefers Mark. She also turns out to be involved in a variety of shady businesses, including gun smuggling. So not only do we have a romantic triangle to spin the plot on, we also have various underworld conflicts as well as the chaos of the fall of Saigon to provide the usual bloodshed. It's not a bad movie: There's plenty of action, Mui and Chow are in good form, and there's some poignancy in the fate of the characters. But it lacks the exhilaration of style that John Woo brought to the first two installments.

A Better Tomorrow II (John Woo, 1987)

Ti Lung, Dean Shek, and Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow II

Cast: Ti Lung, Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung, Dean Shek, Kwan Shan, Emily Chu, Kenneth Tsang, Shing Fui-On, Lam Chung, Ng Man-tat, Peter Wang, Lung Ming-yan, Louis Roth, Regina Kent, Ken Boyle. Screenplay: Chan Hing-ka, Leung Suk-wah, John Woo, Tsui Hark. Cinematography: Wong Wing-hung. Production design: Andy Lee, Luk Tze-fung. Film editing: David Wu. Music: Joseph Koo, Lowell Lo. 

When you have a big action movie hit like A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986), you naturally want to make a sequel. But what do you do when the most popular character was killed off in the first film? You give him a previously unknown identical twin, of course. And not just a look-alike, but a twin with the same mannerisms, like chewing on an unlit matchstick. and equal proficiency at gunplay. And so Chow Yun-fat's Mark Lee is reincarnated in A Better Tomorrow II as Ken Lee. The sequel is bloodier and noisier and more improbable than the original, and it adds a fourth protagonist to the original trio of Ho (Ti Lung), Kit (Leslie Cheung), and Mark, now Ken (Chow): Dean Shek as Lung Sei, the target of a police investigation who turns out to be a good guy being framed. The somewhat too twisty plot takes Lung to New York, fleeing arrest for murder, where he meets up with Ken, a restaurant owner who is in trouble with the mob in America. It also introduces a novel kind of psychotherapy: Lung has a mental breakdown when he learns that the mob back in Hong Kong has killed his daughter and he witnesses the murder of a friend and a little girl. Ken takes it upon himself to heal the catatonic Lung by subjecting him to gunfire: They're attacked by both the Hong Kong and American mobsters. Lung recovers in time to help, and somehow the two of them make their way back home, where they join forces with Ho and Kit. Woo, who was reluctant to make the sequel, agreed in order to give Shek, a friend of his in financial difficulties, a job. Tension between Woo and producer Tsui Hark almost derailed the film, which spends too much time in the New York scenes, but the action sequences are the usual spectacular and inventive overkill. 

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

Chow Yun-fat and Ti Lung in A Better Tomorrow

Cast: Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun-fat, Emily Chu, Waise Lee, Tien Feng, Kenneth Tsang, Shing Fui-on, Sek Yin-si, Wang Hsieh, Leung Ming, John Woo, Tsui Hark. Screenplay: Chan Hing-ka, Leung Suk-wah, John Woo. Cinematography: Wong Wing-hang. Production design: Lui Chi Leung. Film editing: Ma Kam, David Woo. Music: Joseph Koo. 

John Woo's terrific action thriller A Better Tomorrow is less stylized and more conventionally plotted than his later films, but it provides a satisfactory amount of bullets and blood squibs. It's based on an old trope of melodrama: estranged brothers. Sung Tse-ho (Ti Lung) is a gangster involved in a counterfeit operation, and Sung Tse-kit (Leslie Cheung) is a rookie cop. Ho is trying to go straight, however, and he goes to prison partly to sever his ties with the mob in order to make a fresh start after his release. But Kit finds that his older brother's record is an impediment to his advancement in the police force, and he rejects Ho's attempts to reconcile, blaming him for their father's death. The plot centers on their rapprochement, which is ultimately aided by Ho's best friend and fellow mobster, Mark Lee (Chow Yun-fat). Though billed third, Chow steals the movie as the blithe hit man who gets wounded in a shootout, loses favor with the mob, and eventually turns against them. A Better Tomorrow was such a big hit that sequels became inevitable, but as usual the original is the best. 

Hard-Boiled (John Woo, 1992)

ChowYun-fat in Hard-Boiled

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Teresa Mo, Philip Chan, Phillip Kwok, Anthony Wong, Kwan Hoi-san, Stephen Tung, Bowie Lam, Lo Meng, Bobby Au-yeung. Screenplay: John Woo, Barry Wong, Gordon Chan. Cinematography: Wang Wing-heng. Production design: James Leung. Film editing: John Woo, David Wu, Kai Kit-wai, Jack Ah. Music: Michael Gibbs.

About as much fun as you can have watching people die by the dozens. Don't get me wrong: I laughed out loud several times during John Woo's action masterpiece Hard-Boiled, as when Tequila's pants caught fire and the baby he was carrying peed and doused the flames. It's a rush of kinetic effects, and Chow Yun-fat as Yuen (aka Tequila) and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as Alan (or perhaps Ah Long, as the subtitles put it) have chemistry and charisma to spare. But once the dizzying, exhilarating action is over, you're not left with much beyond a pleasant buzz and in my case a nagging feeling that maybe you shouldn't really enjoy mindless violence so much. It's an "it's only a movie" movie that depends on your assurance that those are stuntmen firing fake guns and flinging themselves about and the blood is red stuff packed into squibs. Yet maybe, living as we Americans do in a gun culture, we ought to have an occasional afterthought about what we enjoy so much.

The Killer (John Woo, 1989)

Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee in The Killer

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Kenneth Tsang, Chu Kong, Shing Fui-on, Ricky Yi Fan-wai, Barry Wong. Screenplay: John Woo. Cinematography: Peter Pau, Wong Wing-Hang. Art direction: Luk Man-Wah. Film editing: Fan Kung-Ming. Music: Lowell Lo. 

The rhythmic violence of John Woo's The Killer obliterates thought, turning what could be a study of motives and morals into a ballet of blood-letting that exhilarates with its inherent absurdity. It's a film of overkill, in which dispatching an adversary is never accomplished with one shot but with four or six or eight. No one falls dead, they recoil and squirm. Opponents come in waves, never stepping into the fray but rushing and swooping. If you closed your eyes (not that that's possible), the gunshots could be a drum solo punctuated by grunts and squeals. It is, in short, action movie making at its purest and best. It helps that the actors playing the film's antagonistic protagonists, Ah Jong (Chow Yun-fat) and Li Ying (Danny Lee), possess an innate charisma, so that we're fooled into thinking of them as human beings when in fact they're just plot devices to provoke action. Woo wants us to reflect on their motives and morals, and he gives them speeches to explore those, but then the action starts again and it's just a movie. But what a movie, a torrent of bullets and doves, of religion and gore, of mayhem and honor.  

An Autumn's Tale (Mabel Cheung, 1987)

Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung in An Autumn's Tale

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Cherie Chung, Danny Chan, Arthur Fulbright, Gigi Wong, Joyce Houseknecht. Screenplay: Alex Law, Low Chi-Yeuh. Cinematography: David Chung, James Hayman. Production design: Christy Addis. Film editing: Chu Sun-Kit. Music: Lowell Lo. 

The chemistry between Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung animates the somewhat rough-edged romance of Samuel Pang (Chow) , a thirtysomething slacker, and Jennifer Lee (Chung), a twentysomething woman who arrives in New York expecting to meet her boyfriend, Vincent (Danny Chan), only to find he has a new girlfriend and is moving to Boston. Samuel, known as Figgy (short for Figurehead, a reference to his years as a sailor), takes her under his wing, though she's put off by his slacker ways -- he survives mainly by gambling and carousing with his pals. As in any good romance, she loosens up and he straightens up, though not without the usual backsliding. The film gives some fresh twists to the usual romcom tropes.