South China Morning Post April 18th 1997 Entertainment Focus Cover Story

SCMP promo pic for The Replacement Killers.

Original article written by Fionnuala Halligan for the South China Morning Post weekly Entertainment Focus. Thanks to Weekend Entertainment editor Winnie Chung for clarifying the SCMP position on non-commercial, fan archives of SCMP material. See my Chow Yun-Fat: God of Actors site for more details of CYF's inescapable genius!

Chow the Hollywood Hitman

The change in Chow Yun-fatt is palpable. A year ago, he was a Hong Kong actor waiting for his first Hollywood project to come off, struggling with English and feeling a little frustrated at the long wait a studio picture entails.

Now he bounds across the set of The Replacement Killers in the 30-degree-Celsius heat of central Los Angeles, eight kilograms lighter and fluent in his new tongue.

Some things do not change, however: renowned for his portrayals of cold-blooded killing machines, the 42-year-old Lamma-ite has always been surprisingly sweet-natured off camera. And the fact he is the pivot of a US$26 million (HK$201 million) picture - the only movie Columbia has on its books at the moment - and the occupant of a luxury trailer with an assistant to order his lunches, has not diminished the charm.

Shortly before production started on The Replacement Killers, directed by Antoine Fuqua and co-starring Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino, Chow took the cast and crew out to dinner. Columbia's head of production Teddy Zee noted this was the first occasion he had seen an actor dig into his own pocket.

"A stuntman told me last week that if he had to work on Chow Yun-fatt movies for the rest of his life, he'd be happy," says producer Matthew Bauer. "I think he speaks for all of us."

Today, Chow is being called upon to fire off rounds from a sub-machine gun as part of a movie which is 50 per cent action. He hits his marks, and handles the gun like the seasoned pro he is: as Chow acknowledges, the plot of The Replacement Killers is not a major departure for him.

In it, he plays a professional assassin who baulks at a triad-ordered hit. Fleeing the mob - who have sent two "replacement killers" including Jurgen Prochnow out to murder him - Chow takes passport-forger Sorvino hostage in order to flee the United States and protect his Hong Kong family from the triads.

In cult Hong Kong movies such as A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled (all for director John Woo, currently putting finishing touches to the US$90 million Face Off with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage), Chow has played a hitman with a heart of gold before. But never in English.

"It's funny," he says over lunch in his trailer, "but I'm not nervous at all. This is an unusual opportunity for an Asian actor, and I feel up to the challenge. However, the dialogue can make me tense, make me worried. My character has to talk a lot about his background, his family, and I have to be very careful to memorise all the words, pronounce my l's, my r's, use the right tenses all the time. In normal conversation, you just get the message across. But once it's in the script, you have to pay a lot of attention."

Chow is right in that The Replacement Killers is unusual; not only has Columbia decided to place its trust in an actor unknown outside Asia, the studio has also tailor-made the film for him. The script has gone through 13 drafts, from a point where Chow's assassin was Caucasian to his becoming a Hong Kong hitman who speaks 40 per cent Cantonese dialogue.

"We're going to create a huge new star," says Bauer - but the studio is anxious enough to have had more than 10 producers attached to this movie during its lifetime.

"Columbia has a great deal at stake in how good this picture is," he admits. "And how the film is sold, how Chow Yun-fatt is marketed to US audiences, will be paramount."

Circling around release schedules for an appropriate time, Columbia may not release the movie in the US until late 1997 or early 98. "I predict, though, The Replacement Killers will be sold on Chow's coolness," says Bauer.

"He's a handsome man. He photographs well, wears clothes beautifully. We'll be using that to our advantage by trying to create a persona, a Chinese James Bond, in glossy magazines like GQ."

Everyone is silent on the plot's outcome, but Bauer says: "We want Yun-fatt's character alive for Replacement Killers 2."

The object of all this attention has been living in the Century City area of Los Angeles since January 4 and admits to missing Hong Kong desperately. "I miss my mother, my dogs, my apartment," he says. "My priority is to get back home for the handover. I'll have to come back to America for [dialogue] looping on The Replacement Killers later in the year, and then I'll be ready for my next picture."

He has a number of options open: Fox is developing a remake of The King and I for him, while Oliver Stone's company is preparing another action vehicle, The Corruptor. He would prefer, however, to work with Woo on the director's next project after Face Off, a lower-budget, more-character-driven drama. Chow is accompanied on set by his Singapore-born wife Jasmine, who manages him and takes pleasure in organising dim sum lunches at the weekend for his dialogue coach and new friends on the set. Terence Chang, Woo's producer who has guided Chow through his deals in Hollywood, is also executive producer on The Replacement Killers. So there is a strong sense of family on board.

And Chow has, according to his dialogue coach, "worked like a dog" on his English, and the result is astounding. He is not just fluent; he loves big words - mercurial, serendipity, paraphernalia are dropped into the conversation with alarming ease, to the point where you fret he may ask you for the meaning of something you do not understand. Jasmine jokes that he has swallowed a thesaurus. "Honestly, it would be hard to find a more professional, hard-working performer than Chow," Bauer says.

Co-star Sorvino is busy being manacled to piping by some brutal thugs, but Bauer and Chow deny reports of differences between the two stars. "Mira has been fantastic to work with and I've learned a lot from her," says Chow.

Bauer adds: "Their characters don't like each other, which is where the misunderstanding may come from. Mira would be defined as a method actress, and in the earlier part of shooting the plot called for a definite sense of tension between them. That whole issue is completely irrelevant - you're talking about two different acting styles, two cultural ways in which actors act. Mira is intense; Chow turns it on for the cameras."

Sorvino, who speaks Mandarin fluently, has brought her boyfriend Quentin Tarantino to visit the set - he is a fan of Chow's movies. And when he is not working on his dialogue, the actor has also advised the movie's production manager and designer on the authenticity of key sequences set at a traditional Chinese funeral and in Chinatown - so the movie does not look cheesy when it plays at home in Asia.

His dream, Chow says, is to alternate Hong Kong with Hollywood; a movie at home followed by a film in the US. A longtime fan of mainland directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, he has had to miss out on starring in Chen's new movie, The Assassins, because of The Replacement Killers - but he hopes an opportunity may arise again. But that is only because he misses his home; he is more than happy with the experience of working in the US.

"Oh, it's different," he says. "But I knew it would be. The days are longer, but we get the weekends off. The set-ups take more time, but it's a better atmosphere to give a good performance.

"The fact there are so many producers is all new to me, but before I came here, John [Woo] gave me a lot of lessons on how to deal with the studio, so I already had the basic concept. I'm an actor. I want a good role, I want to give a good performance. I have a good attitude, good discipline. I can handle it. Just do my job and stick to what they want me to do."

Chow laughs heartily before going back to the set. "I'm not a superstar in Hong Kong any more. I'm a new kid on the block."

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