Mastodawn

We male #AAPI #ChineseAmericans have few positive male movie icons or heroes.

For us #Boomer Chinese-Americana, this was #BruceLee, who died far too young. Not only did he have a white wife, he was a "bad dude" & dispelled the negative sexual stereotypes of Asian men that still exist.

While I don't think he's the greatest Asian hero of all time, as the following article suggests, #ChowYunFat was a successor to Bruce & his partnership with John Woo is akin to that between Mifune & Kurosawa but while significant within the genre of Asian action films, far less groundbreaking than the Japanese collaboration was.

In any event, if you never seen #HardBoiled, #ABetterTomorrow & #Killer, you should make the effort to do so, because they are ground breaking movies in the modern #HongKongMovie genre & are essential to a full understanding of Asian action films.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260402-films-greatest-action-hero-is-not-who-you-think

Forget Cruise and Schwarzenegger: Why Chow Yun-Fat is cinema's greatest action hero

The Hong Kong actor made a series of films with director John Woo that revolutionised the action genre – and key to them was his beguiling mixture of toughness and tenderness.

BBC

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steve mookie kong 2d ago

Chow Yun Fat and John Woo were perfectly paired. The Killer was brilliant, but Hard Boiled remains one of my favorite action films. It was, at the time, John Woo's farewell to Hong Kong filmmaking for his transition into the American studio system.

His next film was Hard Target which had all of his staple style, but was basically ruined by JVC. Face/Off was when John Woo really hit his stride in the States and that movie was nearly as good as some of his Hong Kong work. But I don't think he ever really got to make the movies the way he wanted to in the American studio system.

I am sad that Chow Yun Fat never really found a foothold in American cinema (outside of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). His outings as an action hero were tied to terrible scripts and bad directors -- The Replacement Killers and Bulletproof Monk were mostly meh.

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Starcade 2d ago

@mookie @sgt1372

Love, love, love-- Replacement Killers. I'm pretty sure I watch it at least once a year. 🙂

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steve mookie kong 2d ago

@[email protected] @sgt1372 I watch Replacement Killers from time to time -- and even own it on Blu-ray and digital. It is entertaining in its own way, but when compared to Hard Boiled...

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sgt1372

@mookie @Starcade

#ReplacementKillers & #BulletproofMonk are my favorite crossover movies for #ChowYunFat.