And if Woo helped lay the foundations of modern action cinema, Chow was right alongside him, showing what the ideal action hero for these times looked like, both in Woo’s own work and other action classics like Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (1987). “He grounds the fanciful action of John Woo and Lam’s masterpieces in an everyday reality,” Gilman says. “[He’s typically a] working-class Hongkonger trying to follow a code and do the right thing in a world of violence and mayhem.”
His most influential role
The actor’s supporting part in A Better Tomorrow was a breakout for him and established his famous poise and screen presence – just look at him, playing Mark, the confident best friend and Triad brother of Ti Lung’s protagonist Sung Tse-ho, lighting a cigarette on a burning note of money. But it was The Killer (1989) that really proved what he was made of. The film follows Ah Jong, a hitman for the Triads, as he becomes disillusioned with his work. His slow mission of repentance begins after he blinds a singer named Jenny during a gunfight. Not long after this accident, we see Ah Jong struggling in pain after having a bullet dug out of his back. Depicting him as so clearly emotionally and physically wounded early on immediately makes the character’s trajectory clear: he is too open-hearted for a job where vulnerability is punished, and so is doomed.
You can see traces of Chow’s work in The Killer in many films that have followed, particularly ones involving seemingly cold-blooded contract killers finding their soul: you could make a case for Keanu Reeves’ John Wick franchise, influential in its own right, as mixing Woo’s brand of gunplay with Chow’s brand of action-hero cool.
“He’s the emotional centre of these films,” Gilman says, “weary and outraged, damaged and yet romantically yearning… but with an endless supply of bullets.” At one point Ah Jong’s frenemy, cop Li Ying (Danny Lee), observes this yearning within him, noting that his “eyes are very alert… full of compassion, full of passion”. Throughout, the audience sees the battle between the character’s composure and that compassion, which leads him to reckon with the collateral damage of his work. When Ah Jong sees his handler betray him he seethes, with tears in his eyes. Chow makes this moment seem more painful for Ah Jong than a bullet being dug out of his back.
AlamyYet despite this emotional pain, amidst the action scenes’ storm of bullets, Ah Jong’s physical command is impeccable. Chow moves decisively and with grace – such as when he leaps over a motorbike, then fires a shot to destroy another motorbike while still in mid-air.
While imbuing his tough guy characters with tenderness, Chow also maintained a twinkle in his eye: his playfulness is apparent even in a film as dramatic and tragic as The Killer, especially in the scenes when he’s bantering with Li Ying. Elena Lazic, critic and founder of online film magazine Animus, says that the the actor in his 80s and 90s pomp was much “more gregarious and tongue-in-cheek” than his Hollywood peers, even Jean-Claude Van Damme, “[whose persona wasn’t] exactly one of steely seriousness either”. She adds: “I really enjoy watching Sylvester Stallone in his classic films, to name another action superstar, but it’s not always clear that he’s actually enjoying himself, the way Chow Yun-Fat really seems to be.”
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