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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, 06:07:30 PM)
UK reader what are you talking about?
Difficulty with speaking English never hampered Arnulds success nor did his lack of acting ability. Lets see u learn Chinese and go over to Hong Kong and make a movie. His English was vastly improved in Anna and the King and you have watched that movie and you're telling me that he is "barely uttering his lines"?
Even with his heavily accented English
which I think is pretty good for someone learning in a short amount of time and was probably rushed by Hollywood wanting to cash in on a successful Asian action star, he still has a better acting ability than a lot of action stars and has proven in HK and here in Hollywood that he is versatile and can do comedy and drama as well action.
The problem with his movies isnt him, its the scripts Hollywood has been writing and with the exception they have medicore at best. Chow Yun-Fat like any good actor shines through medicore movies.
Ironically Chow Yun-Fat's biggest box office success in the US was when Crouching, Tiger was imported here. Why? The simple reason was that instead of being a Hollywood concept of an Asian film, its an actual asian film, something that Hollywood would never be capable of producing. Instead we will get movies like "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise, probably showing us how he can learn the ways of the samurai and be superior and use it better than the people that teach him. Instead of getting an Asian perspective of asian culture we will get it distilled through some director's and Mister Big Ego view of Asian culture as they see it.
Also, why do u say that Chow Yun-Fat hasnt made it Hollywood? I think all of his Hollywood movies have ended up in the top 10.
I also agree with Mary from Columbus in saying that I would like to see in roles where he is playing in race neutral role.
Im sorry my english friend, but Hollywood is evil which is why bloated trash like Pearl Harbor gets made and where instead of making a film that is creative and thought provoking as well as mind blowing, we get formula movies that are as structurally restricted as Haiku.
Chow Yun-Fat's Hong Kong movies opened up my horizons and showed me that they are alternatives and Hollywood isnt the only place in the world that makes movies, that when Hollywood gets stale and formula that they are other countries making mind blowing films. Also helped me get beyond
"I dont like reading subtitles" syndrome.
chowyunpat
Wednesday, August 07, 2002 at 22:48:59 (PDT)
I think the media in general portray asians as inhuman and demonic. And when an asian is in the media, it's usually a female who is being persued and conquered by a white man. The white man comes to save the asian girl. It's so pathetic.
I saw the Replacement Killers, but I liked it. I just like Fat, no matter how bad the movie. No matter what trash Hollywood tries to put him in, I'll will watch his movies.
p-korea
Wednesday, August 07, 2002 at 16:06:22 (PDT)
Hello to everybody in this site:
I'm a Spanish fan of Yun-Fat and I wanted to put a few words on this matter of his American films and how his American adventure is going on.
I completely agree with Mary from Columbus, Ohio. Somebody should see the wide range of roles Yun-Fat can take on his shoulders and give him the opportunity to show it to the entire world. I've seen many of his Hong Kong films and he didn't just play the "killer with a conscience", but a variety of complex and interesting characters. He can play heroic but also romantic, or intense, do comedies, dramas or pretend he's just the guy next to your door.
If somebody had the chance to enjoy him in films like "An Autumn's Tale", "Hong Kong 1941", "Treasure Hunt", etc., etc., they will know exactly what I'm talking about.
To the Hollywood sharks that manages the actors careers I would humbly ask to give him a real chance to play that guy next door!!! Just wait and see.
Maria from Spain
P.S.: To Yun-Fat. It someday, by any chance you read this, please don't let yourself go in to cheap projects under your talent. You don't deserve it and most important, you don't need it. All my best regards.
Maria from Spain. A long term Yun-Fat fan
cypros@inicia.es
Wednesday, August 07, 2002 at 13:47:27 (PDT)
Before we start talking about evil Hollywood undermining our great stars, let's remember one thing: Chow has struggled to master English. If an actor can barely utter his lines, he needs to have something else to make audiences want to see him. What would this be, in the case of Chow Yun Fat?
I would say Hollywood has given Chow Yun Fat a pretty fair crack at making it big, and it's not Hollywood's fault it hasn't happened.
UK Reader
stevelondon88@hotmail.com
Wednesday, July 31, 2002 at 15:32:39 (PDT)
I have like many other Americans, very much enjoyed the acting talents of Chow Yun Fat. And... like many other Americans, remain perplexed and dismayed why "Hollywood" has not fully embraced this multidimensional performer, despite the vocal cravings of an eager American public.
Further, I don't believe that the American moviegoer expects or desires to see Mr. Chow in only asian inspired story themes. Though I very much enjoy that his involvment in a role, assures us that we will be taken outside our own limited sterotypes.
As a result we crave the calibre of movie productions that will allow him demostrate the universal themes and/or character roles that exampling the human spirit no matter the local. He is not an Asian actor, he is an actor.
I personally would be interested his interpretation of a "James Bond" type character or a reinterpretation of the Cary Grant roles from "North by Northwest, or "To Catch a Thief".
The failure of "Hollywood" to sieze the day with Chow Yun Fat, has not stifled interest in the man or his career. Americans instead have begun a backlash againt the unattentive Hollywood studios, with their discovery and pursuit of the fertile filmographies of Hong Kong, etc.
Chow Yun Fat's greatest gift to America and Americans may be in that by our interest in his career, we have been introduced to the film talents of the "Global community". I'm not frightened of the foreign film any more.
Mary in Columbus, Ohio, USA
Friday, July 12, 2002 at 13:12:59 (PDT)
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