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

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

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Chow Yun-fat in a still from Peace Hotel (1995), Hong Kong director Wai Ka-fai’s first film.

Published: 12:15pm, 22 Jun 2025

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.

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