5 scenes that made ‘cool-as-ice gangster’ Chow Yun-fat a screen legend

May 18 , 2019

With a career still going strong after 35 years, Chow Yun-fat secured his place in the heroic bloodshed genre with films like A Better Tomorrow (1986). In his role as an assured, coolheaded gangster he calmly dispatches a group of bad guys who betrayed him.

Famously modest in real life, Chow Yun-fat’s brilliant on-screen action exploits made him an icon, writes Douglas Parkes

There are few if any Hong Kong actors as accomplished as Chow Yun-fat. From small screen star through his role in TVB classicThe Bund (1980), Chow went on to become a cinematic icon courtesy of his portrayal of Mark, a cool-as-ice gangster, in John Woo’s seminal action flick A Better Tomorrow (1984). And he is still going strong 35 years later. In 2018, he starred in Project Gutenberg and earned a nomination for Best Actor at the 2019 Hong Kong Film Awards.

Chow is famously modest and down to earth despite his status – he still takes the MTR sometimes and was seen helping to clean up debris after Typhoon Hato in 2017.

As he celebrates his birthday on May 18, we look back on his most iconic scenes from some of his best movies.

1. A Better Tomorrow – House shoot-out

Let’s start with that John Woo classic. Chow may have been a big name in local TV, but it was A Better Tomorrow that propelled him to true stardom. His look – sunglasses, trench coat, twin pistols – is nearly as famous, at least locally, as Bruce Lee’s yellow and black jumpsuit from Game of Death.

The stand-out moment of this flick is when Mark (played by Chow) charms his way into a restaurant to deal revenge on a group of gangsters who betrayed him. Fluid and impactful, this was also the first sign of John Woo’s trademark “bullet ballet”.

2. City on Fire – Mexican stand-off

Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (1987) was so good Quentin Tarantino adapted much of it for Reservoir Dogs five years later. Chow played Ko Chow, an undercover cop who joins a gang of jewellery thieves. To maintain his cover, and his life, Ko is forced to go along with the robbers’ heist. When it goes wrong, the gang’s boss claims there is a traitor among them. An incredibly tense Mexican stand-off results as accusations fly back and forth. See below just how much Tarantino “borrowed” to make his critically acclaimed debut.

3. God of Gamblers – Five-card stud showdown

Chow’s gambling trilogy was so popular that it was revived, in all but name, in 2014 as From Vegas to Macau (itself now a trilogy). The series owes much of its popularity to Chow’s skill in portraying the eponymous god of gamblers, a super suave man (at least when not suffering amnesia) seemingly unable to lose whenever he picks up a deck of cards. The high point of God of Gamblers (1989) is the climatic game of five-card stud. The close-ups of cards sliding across green baize and Chow’s range of emotions as the battle seems to twist and turn set the template for an entire sub-genre of Hong Kong gambling films.