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Richard James Havis

Hong Kong filmmaker Wai Ka-fai made his name when he co-founded Milkyway Image with Johnnie To Kei-fung and went about producing, writing, directing or co-directing innovative genre takes like The Odd One Dies, which made the company internationally famous in the late 1990s.
For quite some time, Wai kept himself in the background, leaving the ebullient To as the face of the company. But his creative input was never in doubt.
Here we look at Wai’s first three films as director.
1. Peace Hotel (1995)


Made before he joined forces with To, Wai’s debut feature was an atmospheric action film produced by John Woo Yu-sum.
The unabashed “Eastern Western” was Chow Yun-fat’s last Hong Kong film before he moved to Hollywood, and intriguingly, Chow is credited alongside Wai for Peace Hotel’s story.
Set in an unspecified time that references China’s chaotic warlord era of the 1920s, it stars Chow as a man known only as “The King Of Killers”.
Ridden with guilt after committing a massacre, he founds a sanctuary for fleeing criminals called the Peace Hotel. If those in trouble can make it inside, their pursuers are honour-bound to leave them alone.

All is calm until a deceptive showgirl, played by Cecilia Yip Tung, takes shelter in the hotel, with an angry and well-armed gang hot on her heels.
The gang refuse to accept that the Peace Hotel is a place of sanctuary, and demand the girl is returned to them. But to the ire of the hotel’s “residents”, Chow has fallen in love with her and refuses to give her up.
It is an underappreciated film whose above-average script sets some enjoyable characters within a well-planned plot. The direction is smart for a debut film, and Wai makes full use of an armoury of cinematic techniques.
It is interesting to watch Wai shoehorning a Chinese story into the framework of an American Western.

The brutal violence is seemingly inspired by the revisionist Westerns of the late 1960s – grim works that did not seek to mythologise the Old West – including Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, which was one of Woo’s favourites.
The bleak atmosphere and the musical score reflect Clint Eastwood’s Italian-made “Spaghetti Westerns”, which were also popular with local directors. But the theme of a lone man trying hard to do the right thing against the odds is a hallmark of traditional American Westerns like High Noon.
By contrast, the idea of defending an inn against a superior force is very Chinese, often turning up in the works of wuxia master King Hu.
Wai does not get a great performance from Chow. Yip’s showgirl carries the film with a wild and frantic performance – she is hyperactive and loud, and brings a modern touch to her period character.

Peace Hotel fared well at the local box office, but received mixed reviews.
“Despite allusions to such themes as loyalty, righteousness and one’s responsibility for past sins, the film fails to express anything resembling a mature ethical viewpoint,” noted Post critic Paul Fonoroff.
2. Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 (1997)
Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 quickly set the style for the unusual films that characterised Milkyway Image’s output during the 1990s. The black comedy turned the triad genre on its head, substituting cluelessness and incompetence for heroism and brotherhood.
Moreover, the story took an unusually brave narrative approach, depicting two paths that a petty criminal called Dog, played by Lau Ching-wan, could have taken.

In the first, a crime goes wrong and the passive Dog and his gang flee to mainland China. Things go bad, but the film backtracks and allows Dog a second chance. This leads to another set of unfortunate events in Taiwan.
“An absurdist meditation on the inextricable relationship between Hong Kong, China and Taiwan,” said one review. “Director Wai is a stylist and he creates a topsy-turvy world with an onslaught of distorted images and frantic camera movements.”
Noted the Post: “Director Wai Ka-fai plays with time and fate in a manner that is novel for local cinema. The story and characters are relatively mundane, but the director’s unique point of view makes this more than a cut above the usual.”
3. Needing You (2000)


Needing You is the first film Wai officially co-directed with Johnnie To, although the latter probably spent some time behind the cameras for Too Many Ways to Be No. 1.
The movie marked a departure for Milkway Image, as it was a commercial crowd-pleaser rather than an idiosyncratic work.
Produced under the aegis of the “100 Years Of Film” banner, an initiative to promote local films headed by To, it featured Andy Lau Tak-wah and Sammi Cheng Sau-man in a gently amusing romcom.
The idea was to produce a mainstream film that could compete with the glossy production values of Hollywood films while keeping Milkyway’s creative values intact.

“Although the style of Needing You is different from the previous films of Milkyway Image, it is still our work,” Wai told the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
“Inevitably, many of the ‘genes’ are the same. We still wanted to discuss some philosophical issues such as fate. Commercial touches have been added, but they don’t overwhelm the film.”
Needing You is a white-collar romance in which Lau plays against type as an insensitive executive who gradually falls in love with a scatterbrained office assistant played by Cheng, whose character is modelled on that of a Japanese “office lady”.
The first half, which is successful, is character-driven and focuses on the office gossip that surrounds Lau and Cheng as they try to do their jobs. The second half sees Cheng pegged to marry a rich dot-com businessman and veers less successfully into standard romantic scenarios.

The film marked a departure for Milkyway as it was an adapted screenplay, rather than an original story.
“We invented a lot of stuff for the film,” Wai said. “We took the basis of the story’s white-collar world and went on to create a new kind of story that differed from the normal boy-girl romance.”
The most enjoyable parts of the film directly reference Andy Lau’s motorcycle scenes in the hit A Moment of Romance, which starred Lau and was produced by To.
“Needing You is a Cinderella tale, pure and simple,” said the Post review. “The picture is basically for fans of Andy and Sammi, though the production is so good-natured, even non-fans may find themselves amused.”
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.
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Chow Yun-fat in a still from Peace Hotel (1995).

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Cecilia Yip in a still from Peace Hotel (1995).

Wai Ka-fai at an interview with the Post in 2006. Photo: SCMP

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Classic Hong Kong cinema

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Brigitte Lin (right) in a still from Peking Opera Blues. Photo: Peking Opera Blues

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Michael Wong (front) in a still from Beast Cops.

Directors Gordon Chan (left) and Dante Lam, pictured in 2006. Photo: SCMP

(From left) Anthony Wong, Kathy Chow and Michael Wong in a still from Beast Cops.

Anthony Wong in a still from Beast Cops.

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Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung in a still from Rouge.

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Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung in Rouge.

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(From left) Wenders Li, Sam Lee and Neiky Yim in a still from Made in Hong Kong.

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George Lam (left) and Season Ma in a still from Boat People. Photo: Bluebird Film Company

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Andy Lau as To Minh (left) and George Lam as Akutagawa in a still from Boat People.

Andy Lau as To Minh in a still from Boat People.

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Maggie Cheung in a still from In The Mood For Love. Photo: Jet Tone Films

Maggie Cheung Man-yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-wai in a still from In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-wai. Photo: Jet Tone Films

Tony Leung (left), Maggie Cheung and director Wong Kar-wai during the promotion for In the Mood For Love in Cannes, in 2000. Photo: AFP/Jack Guez

Maggie Cheung in a still from In the Mood For Love. Photo: Jet Tone Films

Tony Leung in a still from In The Mood For Love. Photo: Jet Tone Films

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Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in a still from In the Mood For Love. Photo: Jet Tone Films

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Jackie Chan at an interview with the Post in 1994. Photo: SCMP

Jackie Chan in a still from Drunken Master (1978). Photo: Golden Harvest

Jackie Chan (left) on the set of Drunken Master II.

Jackie Chan (right) and Felix Wong in a still from Drunken Master II (1994).

Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle were not the films that made the Hong Kong comedian famous – so which ones did?

Stephen Chow as Trinket in a still from the film Royal Tramp.

Stephen Chow (left) and Ng Man-tat in a still from Royal Tramp. Critics called Chow 
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Stephen Chow at an interview with the Post in 1989. Photo: SCMP

Stephen Chow at a film shoot in 1989. Photo: SCMP

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Stephen Chow (left) and Anita Yuen in a still from From Beijing with Love.

Gong Li (left) and Stephen Chow pose for photographers to promote The Flirting Scholar in 1993. Photo: SCMP

Stephen Chow in a still from Shaolin Soccer.

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Lau Ching-wan during an interview with the Post in 1996. Photo: SCMP

Lau Ching-wan during an interview with the Post in 1996. He reveals why he measures his English comprehension against The Godfather and why Hollywood does not need him. Photo: SCMP.

Leon Lai (left) and Lau Ching-wan in a still from A Hero Never Dies (1998).

Lau Ching-wan in a still from Full Alert (1997).

Lau Ching-wan (left) and Anita Yuen in a still from C’est La Vie, Mon Cheri (1993).

Lau Ching-wan in a still from Too Many Ways to be Number One.

Lau Ching-wan (third from left) in a still from Big Bullet (1996), directed by Benny Chan.

How Hong Kong director Wai Ka-fai’s first 3 films revealed his storytelling range

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Wai Ka-fai’s Peace Hotel, Too Many Ways to Be No. 1, and Needing You featured stars including Andy Lau, Chow Yun-fat and Cecilia Yip

1. Peace Hotel (1995)

Wai Ka-fai’s Peace Hotel, Too Many Ways to Be No. 1, and Needing You featured stars including Andy Lau, Chow Yun-fat and Cecilia Yip