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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
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Tony Leung Chiu-wai at an interview with the Post in 2005. Having appeared in nearly 100 movies, he is about to be honoured by the Venice Film Festival with a lifetime achievement award. We pick the actor’s 10 best movies. Photo: SCMP

Ranked: the 10 best movies of Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Venice Film Festival 2023 lifetime achievement awardee

  • With the Venice Film Festival set to award Tony Leung a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, we rank the actor’s 10 best films out of the nearly 100 he’s made
  • In movies ranging from Marvel’s Shang-Chi to John Woo actioner Hard Boiled, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution and several with Wong Kar-wai, he’s showed his vast range
At the 80th Venice International Film Festival which opened on August 30, celebrated Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai has been honoured with a special Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement.
During his long and prolific career, Leung has starred in close to 100 feature films, collaborating numerous times with Hong Kong art-house auteur Wong Kar-wai.
Remarkably, the actor has already appeared in three films that won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice festival – Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness (1989), Tran Anh Hung’s Cyclo (1995) and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007).
Leung is currently in production on Silent Friend, a historical drama from Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi (On Body and Soul), and will next be seen on the big screen in Felix Chong Man-keung’s crime drama The Goldfinger, which reunites Leung with his Infernal Affairs co-star Andy Lau Tak-wah.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai on that gay sex scene with Leslie Cheung, and more

In recognition of his diverse achievements, we have compiled our list of Leung’s 10 best films, ranked in order from good to great.

10. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

It is easy to dismiss Leung’s Hollywood debut as a commercial folly devoid of artistic merit, but his performance as Xu Wenwu, the conflicted father turned antagonist of Simu Liu’s eponymous superhero, is a watershed moment for Asian actors and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The underdevelopment of the series’ villains has been a long-running criticism, even among diehard fans, but Leung emphatically reclaims the problematic racial caricature of The Mandarin, instilling in him an emotional complexity and clearly defined cultural identity that had been sorely lacking in the franchise.

9. The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)

Rarely praised for his comedic skills, Leung is in hilarious form in this enduringly silly martial arts extravaganza that exemplifies Hong Kong’s signature mo lei tau style of knockabout comedy.

Shot during one of the many production breaks of Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time, as a quick cash grab to help replenish the budgetary coffers, the same cast reassembles with producer Jeffrey Lau Chun-wai directing.

Loosely inspired by Louis Cha’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes, the film sees Leung sporting ridiculous prosthetic ears and lips for most of the action, after his character accidentally poisons himself.

8. Cyclo (1995)

Leung takes a supporting role in Tran Anh Hung’s dream-like portrayal of Ho Chi Minh City’s struggling underclass in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, as his unnamed gangster and aspiring poet brings destruction upon an impoverished family.

Barely uttering a single word, but furiously chain-smoking through every scene, he brings a young cyclo driver (Lê Văn Lộc) under his wing in order to repay a family debt. In doing so he meets the boy’s beautiful sister (Trần Nữ Yên Khê), but is torn between starting a relationship and forcing her into a life of prostitution.

7. Hard Boiled (1992)

John Woo Yu-sum’s action spectacular sees Leung play an undercover cop embedded deep within Anthony Wong Chau-sang’s gang of ruthless arms dealers. This sets him on a collision course with Chow Yun-fat’s renegade cop, until the pair discover they are on the same side and team up for one of the most exhilarating displays of pyrotechnic overkill in all cinema.

Leung’s character Alan lives on a boat, surrounded by origami cranes representing all the people he has killed while on the job. His introspection and despondency neatly foreshadow the character Leung would play in Infernal Affairs a decade later.

6. A City of Sadness (1989)

Director Hou Hsiao-hsien uses the recent lifting of martial law as the perfect opportunity to tackle the island’s tumultuous post-war history, specifically the 228 incident of 1947, in what is widely considered one of the finest Taiwanese films ever made.

Leung plays the fourth son in a family embroiled in the “White Terror” regime. Rendered deaf and mute following a childhood accident, he uses photography and poetry to observe his family’s struggles and those of the Taiwanese people as a whole.

Hired, somewhat cynically, to improve the film’s international appeal, Leung excels in a uniquely challenging and heart-wrenching role.

5. Lust, Caution (2007)

Never one to shy away from playing a flawed character, Leung is at his charismatic best as Mr Yee, a special agent and recruiter working in 1930s Hong Kong for Wang Jingwei’s puppet government, who is targeted for assassination by a group of radical students.

Tang Wei shot to stardom – only to be subsequently blacklisted in mainland China – as the young woman assigned to seduce Mr Yee, only to fall in love with him instead.

Notorious for its numerous explicit sex scenes, the film was a commercial and critical hit, despite falling foul of the censors in numerous territories.

4. Happy Together (1997)

It would be incredibly easy to fill this list with Leung’s collaborations with Wong Kar-wai, but few of those performances are as brave or vulnerable as in this exquisite romantic drama.

Partnered with the equally wonderful Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, Leung delivers a heartbreaking and unflinching portrayal as Fai, one half of a same-sex couple who travel to Argentina, where their volatile relationship is put to the ultimate test.

Happy Together: Wong Kar-wai on his classic 1997 gay movie

Moody and sultry, the film has been rightly championed by LGBT groups for its honest portrayal, but has also been embraced by romantics everywhere for its raw depiction of tempestuous love.

3. Bullet in the Head (1990)

John Woo’s melodramatic masterpiece draws shameless inspiration from Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter to tell the story of three friends (Leung, Jacky Cheung Hok-yau and Waise Lee Chi-hung) who head to war-torn Vietnam hoping to make their fortune.

Overwhelmed by the violence and betrayal that consume them, it falls to Leung’s character, Ben, to provide the film with its moral compass – that is, until he takes retribution into his own hands.

Hong Kong’s most expensive production yet at the time of its release, Bullet in the Head remains as strong a candidate as any for the title of greatest “heroic bloodshed” movie ever made.

2. Infernal Affairs (2002)

The definitive film of Hong Kong’s post-handover era, this slickly executed crime thriller pits rival moles within the police force and a triad criminal gang against one another as the ultimate interpretation of the city’s fractured, schizophrenic identity.

Andy Lau has rarely been better than as the gang member who would rather keep living the lie of being an accomplished detective.

It is Leung who steals the show, however, with his vulnerable, humanising portrayal of an undercover cop who can no longer prove which side he is really on, and whose own tortured psyche is struggling to tell the difference.

1. In the Mood for Love (2000)

If a single performance could define Leung’s 40-year cinematic career, it is impossible to look beyond the lovestruck journalist and neighbour Chow Mo-wan in Wong Kar-wai’s visually ravishing romance.

From his immaculately groomed appearance and emotionally underplayed demeanour, to the seemingly effortless sexual chemistry that ignites out of nowhere between him and iconic screen partner Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, every frame of this languorously seductive story of unconsummated desire is a testament to Leung’s magnetic screen presence.

In the Mood For Love: what Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Wong Kar-wai said

A master of minimal effort for maximum reward, Leung stands unchallenged as Hong Kong’s greatest living screen actor.

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