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ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
IS HOLLYWOOD UNDERMINING CHOW YUN-FAT?
f it's a sin to make ambidexterous mayhem look stylish and virtuous, Chow Yun-Fat was once eternally damned. Blame it on the camera. Its slow-mo infatuation with his every grin and grimace in John Woo classics like A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled had made him the world's most idolized action star long before his 1996 leap to Hollywood.
Chow's Hollywood projects have undermined rather than enhanced his godlike stature.
Take The Replacement Killers (1996). Its plot was contrived and sterile to a surreal degree. Add to that the look-but-don't-touch romance with leading lady Mira Sorvino and a box office flop was assured.
The Corruptor (1998) did even less for Chow. Not only was he cast as a cop who became corrupted for no good reason, but the action was set in the kind of squalid fleshpot one sees only in the poorest of third-world countries and the Chinatowns of schoolboy fantasies. The coup de grace were jokes casting aspersions on Asian male sexuality. Strike two!
Then came Anna and the King (1999) in which Chow donned embroidered silk buffoonery to play a backward monarch held in thrall by a western schoolteacher. The reworked plot wasn't as ludicrous as the original King and I, but the remake cut Asia's top male superstar to fit the old Hollywood cosmology in which Asians are a quaint race in need of western enlightenment. Strike three!
After that Chow might have been reduced to playing wizened oriental masters dropping metaphysical pearls on young white heroes in training had Taiwanese director Ang Lee not come along to cast him as a legendary swordsman in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Despite its modest production and promotion budgets, the movie slashed all expectations and fairly flew up to become the year's most profitable release.
No coincidence, some suspect, that the role that saved Chow's chestnuts was conceived and written by an Asian and filmed with an all-Asian cast in the world's most pro-Asian nation -- China.
It isn't so much that Hollywood consciously sets out to undermine Asia's top male superstar, argue some. It's just that its imagination has been stewed for so long in its own racist malarkey that it is incapable of letting an Asian leading man play a truly sexy and heroic role. Look how it turned Jackie Chan into a tool (fool?) of Asian-male-bashing comedy in Rush Hour 2. And Hollywood may yet get its apparent wish to deep-six Chow Yun-Fat. In early 2002 Chow starts shooting Bulletproof Monk, a cult comic adaptation, in which he plays an aging master passing on warrior wisdom to a young white hero.
Is Hollywood undermining Chow Yun-Fat's action-superstar stature?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:07:35 PM)
Valley Chinese Dude..
On the contrary, Chow Yun-Fat is a versatile actor with the rare ability
to handle comedy, drama, and has the on
screen charisma and presence to be believed in the action hero mode as well. Unfortunately in the US he is mainly known for his Hong Kong action films, but is just as famours in Hong Kong for his dramas and comedies and has won several awards for his performances.
He has that leading man quality, charm, and charisma to command your attention with just the flash of his smile and can convey deep emotions without having to speak any dialogue at all. That my friends is what acting is all about.
Before he became famous in the movies he was a TV superstar, thanks to his role in the drama Shanghai Grand.
He has probably been in more dramatic or comedic films than action films.
Let me go down the list.
He had an internationally acclaimed performance in Ann Hui's "The Story of Woo Viet" considered by many to be his first important role, which deals with the plight of A Vietnamese refugee, who has been exploited by a foreign crime lord.
His next important role was in "Hong Kong 1941" (1984) for which he won a Taiwan Goldhorse award for best actor
Several years before his superstardom.
These are just some of the dramas he has starred in.
"Love in a Fallen City" (1984)
"Rose" (1986)
"My Will I Will" (1987)
"The Occupant" (1984)
"Why Me?" (1985)
"The Lunatics (1987)
"Love Unto Waste" (1986)
"Dream Lovers" (1986)
"Spiritual Love" (1987)
"Greatest Lover" (1988)
"An Autumn's Tale" (1987)
"City on Fire" (1987) for which he won another asian acting award for Best actor.
"All About Ah-long" (1989) for which he won yet another award for Best actor.
Treasure Hunt (1984)
Peace Hotel (1995)
Now for his comedies
"Eighth Happiness" (1988)
"Diary of a Big Man (1988)
"Fractured Follies (1988)
"The Fun, The Luck, and the Tycoon"
(1990)
"Now You See Love, Now You Don't"
(1992)
So thats quite a list of non action roles and I seriously doubt any Hollywood action star would be able to do that, let alone win 3 awards for dramatic actor.
I agreed with a good deal of your comments and with most of the comments in the editorial except for calling Chow Yun-Fat an action superstar, he is a superstar! He is an actor and unfortunately here in the US it will go largely unappreciated.
Patrick aka chowyunpat
chowyunpat@aol.com
Thursday, January 17, 2002 at 07:43:08 (PST)
Valley Chinese Dude,
You are so wrong about Chow Yun-Fat not being a dramatic actor, all you have to do is watch even the John Woo flicks and you can tell that this guy can truly act, unlike say Van Damme.
Chow Yun-Fat has actually been in just as many if not more dramatic films , than he has action films and like Deniro is very versatile and is comfortable with doing action film as he is with drama or comedy.
Your statement of him not being an dramatic actor couldnt be further from the truth because he was a dramatic actor long before he was in action movies starring in many Hong Kong TV dramas and dramatic films before John Woo cast him in A Better Tomorrow.
Lets see before he was in John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow"(1986) he was acclaimed for his performance in Ann Hui's "The Story of Woo Viet" a dramatic film about the plight of Vietnamese refugees and how they were and perhaps are exploited and he won A Golden Horse award in Taiwan for Best Asian actor for his role in "Hong Kong 1941" (1984). Just let me go ahead and list his dramas:
"Love in a Fallen City " (1984), "Why Me" (1984),"Dream Lovers" (1986), "Rose" (1986), "Spiritual Love" (1987), " An Autumns Tale" (1987), "All about Ah-long" (1989) for which he won a Hong Kong Film award for Best Actor, "Treasure Hunt" (1994), "Peace Hotel (1994)".
And they are more, those are just the ones I can think of and of the dramas I have only seen 3 and believe me in my opinion the man is a natural actor, and is completey convincing in most every role he has played.
Ok lets see his comedies:
"100 Ways to Murder Your Wife" (1986), "Diary of A Big Man" (1988), Fractured Follies (1988), "The Eighth Happiness" (1988), "The Fun, The Luck, and The Tycoon (1990), and "Now You See Love and You Don't" (1992).
So there goes your statement about him being a screen presence which i think you meant to mean that he has screen presence which any great actor has and I dont think it as an understatement to call him "the Deniro of Hong Kong" because he is a superstar over there and known for more than just his action films and has won at least 3 awards for his dramatic acting and one of which i forgot was for the crime drama "City On Fire" (1987). Excuse me, but somebody that is just a "screen presence" as you say doesnt win awards for acting.
And the ending of the editorial piece has the misnomer "action superstar" Chow Yun-Fat when it should just be superstar.
Name me one Hollywood action superstar that was won an Oscar.
Patrick aka chowyunpat
chowyunpat@aol.com
Wednesday, January 16, 2002 at 12:49:09 (PST)
"not the chance to be a dramatic actor (he never was!!!)"
Utterly false. Have you ever watched "An Autumn's tale" and his TV series from 70's and 80's?
FOP
Thursday, January 10, 2002 at 11:56:58 (PST)
What does it matter that Hollywood rarely produces quality scripts and movies that make a difference? It's not like Chow Yun Fat ever uttered any profound and thought provoking lines in his films either. Don't confuse CYF with Anthony Hopkins, someone who is a real actor.
Chow Yun Fat is not an actor. He is a screen presence. There's a difference. The truth is that we watch him because he's a bad ass mo fo, the epitome of cool. He makes killing look like an art form and along with John Woo, they have revolutionized the gun flick. And this is what Hollywood is denying him -- not the chance to be a dramatic actor (he never was!!!) but to again look cool before an audience of different color faces. But Hollywood doesn't think Asian guys are cool and that's the bottom line.
So they cast these old, wrinkled farts like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone who we all know could not even hold Chow Yun's jock. Or they try to turn a pansy like Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson or John Travolta into an action star. Those wusses couldn't even hold a gun straight. How pathetic.
Valley Chinese Dude
Wednesday, January 09, 2002 at 23:04:22 (PST)
Chow Yun-Fat has on-screen charm, very handsome and a great actor. But the fact is, Hollywood is being run by rich, ignorant, overweight moguls who still don't know jack what filmmaking is; they are in the business solely for the money. People there like to kiss the ass of Chow Yun-Fat's uber-cool image & declared that they all love him & they all watched "The Killer" & worship the very ground that he walked on & all that.
But once Mr. Chow asks them for a decent acting job, Hollywood all turned their fat, pale asses around because they simply don't know what to do with him. "Oh he's asian, what can we do?" Nobody in the industry, even those who claimed to worship him, have any desire to write stories featuring their so-called "Coolest Actor in the World" Hollywood is like "Oh man, CYF rocks" and stuff, but the scripts that he's been getting are probably 99% rubbish. It doesn't even matter whether his english is limited, because most Hollywood movies nowadays don't have a single intelligent dialogue in them anyway.
Bottom line is that Hollywood is a place to have orgies, NOT to produce quality films that can make a difference.
Damnyews
Wednesday, January 09, 2002 at 03:57:12 (PST)
I read that Chow came to Hollywood to pursue new and challenging roles since he had done it all in asian films. It's ironic that he gained more fame in an asian "Crouching" foreign film than any of his american made films. Nonetheless, I believe he is simply paying his dues, so he can get better roles and demanding more money if one of his newer films hit big time. Look at Jet-Li, he played a bad guy in LW4, now he is the good guy in all the newstarts. I also heard that Jackie is considering taking up movies that are atypical of his bafoon style, now that he is more well known. So, I wish them all the best.
Wise Guy
Tuesday, January 08, 2002 at 13:07:18 (PST)
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