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Daniel Eagan

“That’s me,” Nicholas Tse Ting-fung says, pointing to the screen of his smartphone. In a video, the actor is seen donning a vest and harness before performing a stunt in Customs Frontline.
In the scene, a crane lifted Tse seven storeys off the ground. He jumped onto a cargo container held aloft by cables, sliding off backwards as it tilted towards the ground. The film’s director, Herman Yau Lai-to, winced as he watched from the actor’s side, muttering, “Safety first.”
“It was raining that day,” Tse recalls. “I had to persuade Herman to let me do the stunt because there’s a certain amount of danger involved. A stunt choreographer was holding the camera and following me as I rolled off the container and dropped down to a car windshield.”
Tse spoke to the Post for this interview just before the world premiere of Customs Frontline at the 26th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, in May.


A large-scale adventure crammed with stunts and action sequences, the film opens with a deep-sea battle off the coast of Africa before introducing customs officers Tse and his boss, played by co-star Jacky Cheung Hok-yau, back in Hong Kong, where they are trying to break up an arms-smuggling ring.
In addition to chases, shoot-outs and fight scenes, Customs Frontline brings up some unexpected subplots, such as a lead character’s bipolar disorder.
You hit for real, and if you can’t take it, get out of there. That’s how I was brought up.
Nicholas Tse on choosing Jackie Chan-style stunts over CG
This is the first time Tse has taken an action director credit on a feature film, although he has been working with his stunt team for years, training at his own workshop and frequently at Jackie Chan’s facility.
“You have to work with people you know,” he says. “Like on that container, when I fell, the choreographer was chasing me.
“I had to trust him not to drop the camera or land on my face.”


In Customs Frontline, Tse and Yau made a conscious decision to return to the large-scale spectacles of an earlier generation, what Tse calls “traditional Hong Kong action cinema”. The actor performed his own stunts, including several risky underwater sequences, and the filmmakers tried to avoid CG as much as possible.
“We dealt with a lot of heavy machinery,” Tse says. “We’re working in units of tons. That container was 7,500 pounds (3,400kg). When so much heavy stuff is involved, it gets pretty dangerous. We had a long preparation time to blow up a lot of c***.”
In addition to ships colliding and trucks smashing into buildings, Tse engineered stunts where cars fell from the sky, narrowly missing pedestrians.
“That’s all real,” he says. “Real trucks, real ships, real cars. CG has a different tone. I think that’s what drives us to go back to Jackie Chan’s style. You hit for real, and if you can’t take it, get out of there. That’s how I was brought up.”

Tse’s work involved a considerable amount of planning, from training with his stunt team to testing gear to camera placement.
“Throughout my career, I’ve had a lot of input on my own action stunts,” he says. “I guess this is the first time I’m officially listed as a director.
“So I was very involved in things like where to put the camera, how to cover material – although to be honest, Herman is a real veteran of the genre. He had a lot of input about the camera.”
No amount of preparation can fully prepare stuntmen or -women for explosions. Even in Hollywood, most bomb sequences are handled by visual effects teams in post-production. But many of the blasts in Customs Frontline were real.

“All the testing is very costly,” Tse says. “We needed to do a lot of prep, so we were spending a lot of money. But I think it really pays off. There’s one in the movie – it’s in the trailer too – where I am about a metre [3 feet] away from the explosion.
“I just got off the set of [the upcoming film] Raging Havoc, which I’m making with Andy Lau [Tak-wah],” Tse adds of the upcoming sequel to Raging Fire, on which he is also serving as action director.
“That film has one of the biggest explosions I’ve ever done in my life. You have to feel the danger.”
Herman didn’t want me to look like a hero. He wanted the action to be a bit more realistic.
Nicholas Tse
The actor admits that the adrenaline rush is part of the appeal of doing his own stunts. “A lot of people can make action films, but if there’s too much CG, then it’s just something that’s done in post-production. It’s not a true action film.”
He says he did not need to adjust his normal training regimen for Customs Frontline. In fact, Yau sometimes had to rein Tse in during filming.
“Because I’m playing a customs official, Herman didn’t want me to look like a hero,” Tse says. “He wanted the action to be a bit more realistic. Whenever I kicked a bit too high, he would say, ‘That’s too superhuman.’”

Over several decades, Tse has worked with the best in the business, including action maestros such as the late Benny Chan Muk-sing (Shaolin, Raging Fire) and Dante Lam Chiu-yin (The Stool Pigeon, The Viral Factor).
Jackie Chan, who worked with Tse in 2004’s New Police Story, even asked the budding filmmaker to direct a planned sequel, New Police Story 2.
“We always wanted to make a sequel, and for two or three years now Jackie has been telling me, ‘You be the director,’” Tse says. “I think it’s very hard to be the director and the actor.
“I finally told him, ‘OK, I’ll direct if you produce.’ We’re still in the process of developing the script.”

In addition to his movie career, Tse has opened a string of restaurants and developed his own food brand, Chef Nic. This is on top of his success as a musician.
“Chef Nic is doing very well,” he says. “It’s all part of the creative process. I like making stuff, whether it’s music or movies or stunts or food. I think that impulse is very similar no matter what field I’m working in.”
This was Tse’s first appearance at Udine, the largest Asian film festival in Europe. Yau, a regular visitor, screened three of his films this year.

“It’s an honour to be here,” Tse says. “This festival helps not only Hong Kong films, but the whole of Asian cinema.
“It’s a great opportunity to connect with the world and present our movies.”
What about the current state of the Hong Kong film industry?

“We’re in a desperate era,” Tse says. “Where it is now, I think it can only go up. That’s part of what drives me.
“I want to use everything I know to contribute. That’s exactly why I’m walking into explosions and blowing up stuff with me inside. It takes more than CG to break through to the audience.”
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Nicholas Tse in a still from Customs Frontline. The Hong Kong actor, who got his first action director credit for his work on the Herman Yau movie, tells the Post how he engineered stunts in a “traditional” way to make “a true action film”.

Nicholas Tse on the set of Customs Frontline filming a stunt involving a shipping container.

Nicholas Tse slides from the container onto a car on the set of Customs Frontline.

Tse performs a stunt on the set of Customs Frontline.

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Nicholas Tse (front) and Jacky Cheung in a still from Customs Frontline.

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Nicholas Tse talks about channelling Jackie Chan to keep the stunts authentic in Customs Frontline, his first outing as an action director


He got his first action director credit for Customs Frontline: Hong Kong actor/singer Nicholas Tse talks about how he avoided CGI, even for explosions, to keep the film’s stunts as real as possible.


Customs Frontline’s Nicholas Tse on adding action director to his CV and his ‘real’ stunts

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Nicholas Tse talks about channelling Jackie Chan to keep the stunts authentic in Customs Frontline, his first outing as an action director

Nicholas Tse talks about channelling Jackie Chan to keep the stunts authentic in Customs Frontline, his first outing as an action director