Hong Kong Film is Back in Action

The stories might be entirely unrelated, but Soi Cheang’s recent box office hit, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In and the upcoming Stuntman (武替道) by debuting directors Albert and Herbert Leung share a few key points. Both star fast-emerging actor Terrance Lau and under-appreciated journeyman Philip Ng, and both are defined by a strong undercurrent of nostalgia. But whereas Walled In uses the conventions of the gangster melodrama to reflect on a vivid chapter of Hong Kong’s past, Stuntman uses its past to wonder aloud about its future – specifically its cinema future.

In the film, aspiring stuntman Long (Terrance Lau) lands a job with the legendary and obsessive filmmaker Sam Lee (played by the equally legendary Stephen Tung), who’s hoping his next, last film will redeem a career marred by a disaster that happened during Hong Kong’s golden age of action movies. The idea for the film came during the Leungs’ first Hong Kong job in Benz Kong’s Twins Mission (2007). It also starred industry titan Sammo Hung.

“We were very fortunate to be able to meet Sammo,” says Herbert. “We were fans; basically we grew up with his films.” They took advantage of the situation to ask about making those iconic films and get an autograph. “And he looked at the DVD and said, ‘You know what? You can’t do these films anymore.’ He said budget wise it won’t work, and those types of action actors no longer exist.”

“He said, ‘The good times are long gone’,” adds Albert.

That’s the moment Stuntman was born. The film celebrates the lunacy, creativity and from-the-hip action choreography that defined the industry in its 1980s and early-1990s heyday. Notoriously hazardous — watch any Jackie Chan credit reel — but visually arresting (such as in Pedicab Driver, Hard Boiled or City on Fire), the films influenced directors worldwide. At the same time, Stuntman laments the passing of an era, fearing the apprentices in South Korea, the United States and Europe have eclipsed the master. 

“I don’t fear it actually,” says Albert. “They are doing it better.”

The Leungs come from something of a martial arts tradition. Their father studied choy li fut (coi3 lei5 fat6 蔡李佛), and happened to be a kung fu brother to actor Ng’s father. As kids watching Hung and Chan, they decided they had to learn kung fu, but as kids they didn’t take anything terribly seriously, and their dad gave up teaching them. Their wushu studies took a more serious turn years later after relocating to Toronto with the family at eight. It was there both boys got more serious about marital arts and eventually studying cinema. Herbert went to Ryerson University (now renamed Toronto Metropolitan University) and Albert to Sheridan College (known for its animation school) after a stint in the University of Toronto’s electrical engineering department. It goes without saying they were ready for careers in the movies when they returned to Hong Kong. They started as actors when Sundream Motion Pictures was looking for twins that knew martial arts for Twins Mission, a vehicle for then-massive Cantopop girl group Twins.

“But after that we didn’t get any opportunities as actors again, and we were struggling,” says Albert. “It was tough, so we had to go back to our nine-to-fives.” For Herbert that was work as a corporate, wedding and television videographer. Albert was in operations for Walt Disney’s DCVI – Disney Character Voices International – managing dubs for Asia Pacific.

“He’s the official Cantonese Donald Duck,” Herbert chimes in. As if on cue, Albert bursts into a Donald Duck interpretation original voice actor Clarence Nash would marvel at. “People ask how I do it, and I’m like, ‘Well, if you sit in your cubicle for 10 years talking to yourself like that, eventually you’ll figure it out,’” he jokes.

Despite the setback, the Leungs never abandoned the idea of making movies. Their second stab at the business came in 2015, and the first step then was joining the Hong Kong Stuntman Association, which advocates for safe working conditions and professional standards but is also working to train a new generation of stunt performers. Herbert agrees with One Cool producer Jacqueline Liu that censorship, economics and consumer behaviour, as well as Covid, global conflict, looming elections and recession are all issues that are impacting film sectors worldwide right now, but just as crucial is that lack of a next generation of talent across the board.

“I always think when there’s chaos, there’s opportunity,” he says. “I think every moment in time, when the world starts changing, there’s always opportunity. I think everyone is waiting on the sidelines to see what happens before they react. And film is not a necessity. It’s entertainment. Do we need it? Younger generations watch YouTube; they think YouTubers are celebrities. The perspective is completely different. I think as new filmmakers we have to start finding our own path. We can’t really do things the way we used to.”

By the same token, the dearth of production doesn’t encourage newcomers. “Local stuntmen have been lucky to have some opportunities recently – like going to the UK to work on the Tom Hardy film [Havoc], and then Walled In gave many an opportunity to work with Kenji [Tanigaki],” says Albert. “But the sad thing is, on average, stuntmen in Hong Kong are in their late-30s to early-40s. The other guys they worked with were in their early-20s. We do need to inspire more young people, but it’s hard when there’s so few jobs to go around.”

Nonetheless they did find work – or created their own, as performers, action directors and coordinators on films such as Colour of the Game, One Second Champion and The Goldfinger. The whole time the idea for Stuntman never went away. “Throughout those years of doing stunts I picked up a lot of the current generation’s perspective on the industry and what they’re struggling with,” says Albert. “There’s a contrast between the boomers who experienced the Golden Age and have lost it all, and the new generation who never had that experience, but have a perfect image to work towards. They’re both struggling, but from different angles. The dynamics of two generations is what we’re trying to illustrate in Stuntman.”

The brothers pitched the film at least twice to different producers who both passed on the idea. But then the 2020 documentary Kungfu Stuntman, produced by legendary stunt actor (The Goldfinger) and director (Cold War) Chin Kar-lok, landed and it lit a fire within the industry. The pair was working on the script one day in a Tsim Sha Tsui Starbucks, looking at the Bruce Lee statue on the Avenue of Stars, and got to wondering how the monument to one of cinema’s greats was moved to a relatively obscure corner when the promenade was renovated between 2017 and 2019. Did it mean audiences didn’t care about Lee or Hong Kong action? They were throwing around ideas and recalled Tung was in Enter the Dragon and couldn’t resist the symbolism of having him in Stuntman. 

The Leungs have set themselves up as outliers in the First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) by producing a film that’s far from the introverted dramas the programme has become known for. That’s by design. Albert cites two huge influences on him and his work: Hung’s 1987 classic Eastern Condors, a kind of Hong Kong Dirty Dozen that also credits Yuen Biao, Corey Yuen and Yuen Wah among its martial arts directors, and Ronny Yu’s Fearless (2006), starring Jet Li. For Herbert, it’s Jackie Chan’s Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985), the combination of which arguably made Chan a superstar, despite appearing in Drunken Master in 1978. Stuntman begins with a cleverly shot sequence that directly references those films, wherein the younger Sam (Lam Yiu-sing) directs a stunt that goes horribly wrong and paralyses the actor. Decades later, he gets a last chance to go out on a high note and also give Long, the next generation, a chance, and reconnect with a past one in star Wai (Ng). Conflict arises between Sam’s old-school, guerrilla thinking and Wai and Long’s much safer, modern ideas, and mirrors the crossroads the Hong Kong film industry sits at.

Albert worked with Lau on Walled In, and the brothers had their fathers’ connection to Ng, but they got lucky in snagging Tung to play Sam. Echoing Love Lies’ Ho Miu-ki, the Leungs had to win Tung over with a resonant script rather than a generous paycheque. “Stephen has a lot of passions, and it just so happened our script aligned with something he’d wanted to say for a long time,” says Herbert. It helped that they had A Light Never Goes Out writer Anastasia Tsang and Oliver Yip (The Sparring Partner) to build out the story to incorporate more relatable elements, like Sam’s fraught relationship with his daughter (Cecilia Choi) and Long’s with his brother (Max Cheung). “They were invaluable,” admits Albert. “We know the stunt industry too well, and I don’t know if an outsider would connect. We didn’t want to exclude anyone; we want a mass audience.”

The Leungs push back on the idea that the FFFI has to be all social drama all the time too. “We want to establish ourselves as more towards the action genre,” explains Herbert. “I like drama too but not a lot of the FFFI films are action. So we want to fill that space.”

Albert agrees, noting a trip to Cannes with director Nick Cheuk last year was eye-opening from a market point-of-view. During his unscientific survey he discovered that, for foreign sales agents, there’s just too much drama from Hong Kong right now, with little appeal to audiences abroad. “They’ve been waiting for action. I think Walled In was what they’d been waiting for,” he gives a little shrug. “Maybe this one could also be an interesting film for them to look at.”

Stills are courtesy of One Could Production.

Stuntman opens September 26.