Celebrate Donnie Yen’s birthday with five of his best films
The actor is a kung fu legend who often choreographs the fighting scenes in his movies
Hong Kong’s action movie star Donnie Yen celebrates his 55th birthday today. Here are five Donnie Yen movies (in no particular order) that you should watch.
1. ‘Ip Man’ series (2008, 2010, 2015)
Ip Man is the best-known movie character Donnie Yen has portrayed. The series is a trilogy about the life of the legendary grandmaster of the Chinese martial art of wing chun, and is set from the time of the Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s to the 1950s when Ip Man promoted wing chun in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Yen, says that each film has a hidden theme. The first was about “survival”, the second focused on “making a living and adapting”, while the last one unveiled the “essence of life”. Yen is working on the fourth film in the series this year, which is expected to be the first in the franchise to be set in America.
Directed by Hong Kong’s Wilson Yip, the first film won the Best Film award at the 28th Hong Kong Film Awards, racking up US$21.9 million in box office receipts worldwide.
2. ‘Flash Point’ (2007)
Also directed by Wilson Yip, this movie is another classic Hong Kong action movie starring and produced by Donnie Yen. The movie features famous actors from Hong Kong and the mainland, including Louis Koo, Collin Chou, Lui Leung-wai, Fan Bingbing and Xing Yu.
The fighting scenes choreographed by Donnie Yen are the highlight of the movie, which won the Best Action Choreography at the 27th Hong Kong Film Awards and the 44th Golden Horse Awards. The character Yen played, Ma Jun, is a police sergeant who is fighting against a Vietnamese triad. Yen uses mixed martial arts in the movie, incorporating wushu with martial arts from other countries. He considers the mixed martial arts featured in this movie as one of his greatest achievements in martial arts.