Chow Yun Fat
The LA Times proclaimed Chow Yun Fat the coolest actor in the world. You're darn right.
Chow Yun Fat is best known for playing heroic gunfighters in John Woo's Chinese action movies, most famously in The Killer, Hard Boiled, and A Better Tomorrow. These roles reached audiences audiences around the world through a combination of Woo's hyperman, each possessing a charm and likability that makes them genuinely heroic, even when the bullets start flying and the bodies start dropping.
When Setting Out For Revenge, First Dig Two Games
It is safe to say that Chow Yun Fat and John Woo changed the face of action cinema forever. While neither had a tremendous amount of success in America, their films have been imitated by countless new directors. While Woo changed the game with his bullet-ballet style, at the heart remains Chow Yun Fat's cursed, condemned heroes. Unlike many action heroes, Chow Yun Fat's doomed killers were very human and vulnerable, prone to doubt and tormented by remorse. Yet despite the darkness that many of his characters descended into, they never lost their romance. Chow Yun Fat cut his teeth acting in Chinese soap operas and his characters were always snappily dressed, charismatic, romantic, and likable.
Chow Yun Fat broke into the big time with his performance in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, which established his trademark snappy dress sense and honorable gangster characterization, and catapulted him to the top of the pack. He worked with Woo again in the sequel, as well as The Killer, Hard Boiled, and Once a Thief. Aside from his work with John Woo, he worked on many legendary Chinese action movies, including the God of Gamblers series, City on Fire (the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs), Curse of the Golden Flower, Full Contact, and dozens of others. His American work includes Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Corruptor (my favorite American Chow Yun Fat film), The Replacement Killers, Anna and the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: World's End.
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