Chow Yun-fat in 'A Better Tomorrow' (1986, dir. John Woo)

A star-making performance from Hong Kong's most charismatic screen-presence

Chow Yun-fat became a star throughout Asia in 1980 following a starring role in the hugely successful television series The Bund, produced by Hong Kong’s premier television production company TVB. But Chow wanted to be a movie star, and attempted to pivot away from television into the movie industry. His first cinematic ventures were, to put it mildly, disastrous. But then, on the 2^nd of August 1986, John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow was released in Hong Kong. Chow awoke the next day as Hong Kong’s most sought after movie star.

It’s hard to convey Chow’s magnetism using still images. He was, make no mistake, a major sex symbol throughout East Asia, but he was also often pleasantly stocky, with a round, friendly face and a rather strangely set nose and mouth – when he smiles, he shows both rows of teeth, and his top lip forms a very specific and easily recognisable ‘m’ shape. He’s the kind of actor who, based on photographs alone, a casting director would likely consider for the role of ‘goofy best friend,’ or ‘loveable doofus.’ But the thing about Chow Yun-fat is that he also happens to be one of the most intensely charismatic movie stars of all time, and when you see him on the big screen, it’s impossible to imagine him as anything other than the leading man. That’s not to say Chow can’t do broad comedy – he absolutely can; witness his performances in Let the Bullets Fly (2010, dir. Jiang Wen), God of Gamblers (1989, dir. Wong Jing), The Diary of a Big Man (1988, dir. Chor Yuen). But his most iconic roles are inarguably those wherein he’s simply allowed to set the screen on fire with his sheer presence – think The Killer (1989, dir. John Woo), A Better Tomorrow (1986, dir. John Woo), Prison on Fire (1987, dir. Ringo Lam). He’s simultaneously incredibly cool, intensely likeable, and capable of being genuinely frightening. The excellent, incisive critic Angelica Jade Bastien tweeted some time ago asking her followers who they considered a worthy successor to Cary Grant. Most of the answers were rejected out of hand, but one of the few proposed actors whom she acknowledged as having potential was Chow.

“Cary Grant,” Pauline Kael wrote in 1975, “is the male love object. Men want to be as lucky and enviable as he is—they want to be like him. And women imagine landing him.” This statement could well apply to Chow, too. His character in A Better Tomorrow, Mark Lee, was widely imitated following the film’s release, and remains one of the most iconic figures in Hong Kong’s cinematic history. Chow-as-Mark is the masculine ideal; charming, tough, loyal, as comfortable partaking in a shoot-out as he is being emotionally vulnerable. His appeal to male viewers is self-evident. But it’s worth noting that he is also an actor capable of real tenderness towards women – his chaste romance with Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, dir. Ang Lee) is perhaps the one thing that elevates the film beyond an aesthetic exercise, and he’s so sweet with Sally Yeh in The Killer that she’s barely even angry when she realises he is in fact the gunman responsible for blinding her. He’s a movie star in the Old Hollywood mould – possessing the kind of universal appeal that so few performers do, the kind that is entirely necessary if an actor aspires towards icon status. And make no mistake, Chow is an icon, deeply beloved in his native Hong Kong (where he’s widely referred to as ‘Brother Fat’) and was once referred to by the Los Angeles Times as “the coolest actor in the world.”

In the mid-90s, Chow made an ill-advised attempt to replicate his success across East Asia in Hollywood. He was doomed to fail – even today, Hollywood would have no idea what to do with an Asian star of his ilk. First of all, he was not a martial artist, so he could never have been positioned as a Jackie Chan figure. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, his most iconic roles revolved around his debonair sex appeal – Hollywood does not allow Asian men to play romantic leads with any degree of frequency. That being said, he did get to turn in a typically charming, nuanced romantic performance opposite Jodie Foster in the 1999 remake of Anna and the King (dir. Andy Tennant). It’s a shame the film itself is so pedestrian. Chow definitively moved away from American filmmaking in the mid-2000s, returning to Hong Kong, where he resides to this day. These days, he appears in the odd prestige picture (Johnnie To’s Office is perhaps the best of his recent output), and a lot of schlock (pseudo-God of Gamblers spin-off Vegas to Macau III (2016, dir. Andrew Lau Wai-Keung, Wong Jing), anyone?). Regardless of the quality of the films he appears in, however, he appears to be having a great deal of fun.

Chow Yun-fat is the kind of movie star that does not seem to exist anymore – a dashing romantic lead, a hard-as-nails action star, and a goofy comedian wrapped up in one 6ft2” (uncommonly tall for a Hong Konger, and undeniably another element of his appeal to women) body. His performance in A Better Tomorrow is one of the great star-making moments – there’s an undeniable frisson experienced when one watches the opening minutes of the film, the kind of thrill that come part and parcel with witnessing the birth of an icon. The Hong Kong film industry between the 1970s well into the 1990s was fertile ground for movie stars, but if we’re talking pure charisma, it’s practically undeniable; Chow reigns supreme. At one point later in the film, Ti Lung’s Sung Tse Ho asks Chow’s Mark whether he believes in God. Mark barely has to think about his response; “I am God.” And because it’s Chow saying it, you almost believe it.