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Donnie Yen

A collection of 16 posts

The Prosecutor (Donnie Yen, 2024)

The Prosecutor (Donnie Yen, 2024)

A Donnie Yen courtroom drama may seem like an ominous way to kick off the year in film 2025, but this is the world we’ve made for ourselves and we must go to where the movies are. Probably inspired by recent films like A Guilty Conscience and The Sparring

The Shaolin Cinematic Universe

The Odd One Dies

The Shaolin Cinematic Universe

This was originally commissioned by the Vulgar Cinema website in July 2014, and was published in December 2015. Then, after that site disappeared, it was revised and republished at Frame.land in May 2019. Now that site too appears to be defunct, so I'm posting it once again

In the Line of Duty IV (Yuen Woo-ping, 1989)

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In the Line of Duty IV (Yuen Woo-ping, 1989)

The Tiger Cage Trilogy (Yuen Woo-ping, 1988-1991)

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The Tiger Cage Trilogy (Yuen Woo-ping, 1988-1991)

Raging Fire (Benny Chan, 2021)

Raging Fire (Benny Chan, 2021)

Director Benny Chan died almost one year ago, just as he was finishing his final film, the Donnie Yen vehicle Raging Fire, which is being released this weekend across North America. Chan was a reliable director of genre films, raging from A Moment of Romance (1990), one of the true

Enter the Fat Dragon (Wong Jing & Tanigaki Kenji, 2020)

Enter the Fat Dragon (Wong Jing & Tanigaki Kenji, 2020)

Things have been tough in Hong Kong lately. Months of protests over the lack of democracy and transparency in the Special Administrative Region sparked violent reprisals by police, with fears of the coronavirus outbreak on the Mainland only making things worse. The protests have split the entertainment community, with many

Big Brother (Kam Ka-wai, 2018)

Big Brother (Kam Ka-wai, 2018)

Into the hallowed tradition of high school movies wherein juvenile delinquents are straightened out by an unconventional teacher steps none other than Donnie Yen, his furious fists solemnly taking up the mantle of Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, and Dangerous Minds. It’s clearly a project that means something to

Donnie Yen Capsule Reviews

Donnie Yen Capsule Reviews

Drunken Tai Chi (Yuen Woo-ping, 1984) — December 12, 2017 Yuen Woo-ping spent the better part of a decade trying to make Donnie Yen a star, beginning with this period non-specific kung fu comedy. Donnie plays a badass rich kid who drives a bully insane with fireworks (in self-defense of course)

Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)

Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)

There’s a little making-of featurette on the Miramax DVD of Hero⁠[1] that has some decent interviews with the cast and crew along with some breathless Hollywood narration. Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, and Donnie Yen speak impeccable English, which makes one wonder what might have been if Hollywood wasn’

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (Yuen Woo-ping, 2016)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (Yuen Woo-ping, 2016)

A straight-to-Netflix multinational English language collaboration that is the sequel to the highest-grossing foreign language film in American history, Sword of Destiny reunites star Michelle Yeoh with the action choreographer from the first film, Yuen Woo-ping. Belonging more rightly to the CGI-driven Chinese wuxias of the 2010s (and the cheaper

Ip Man 3 (Wilson Yip, 2015)

Ip Man 3 (Wilson Yip, 2015)

Ip Man 3 is the third film directed by Wilson Yip starring Donnie Yen in the title role as the master of the Wing Chun style of kung fu. Ip is best known as one of Bruce Lee’s teachers, and his notoriety and fame to this day is largely

Kung Fu Jungle (Teddy Chan, 2014)

Kung Fu Jungle (Teddy Chan, 2014)

The latest acclaimed Hong Kong film to sneak onto Seattle Screens at the AMC Pacific Place (following Johnnie To’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 and Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain, among other recent hits) is a new collaboration between director Teddy Chan and star/

Wuxia (Peter Chan, 2011)

Wuxia (Peter Chan, 2011)

Known in the US as Dragon, the actual title of Peter Chan’s 2011 film is Wuxia, the name of a genre of both film and literature, a word that is a compound of “wu” (military) and “xia” (chivalry, more or less). Wuxia stories are stories of warrior heroes, knights-errant,

New Dragon Gate Inn (Raymond Lee, 1992)

New Dragon Gate Inn (Raymond Lee, 1992)

This was nominally directed by Raymond Lee, a cog in the Film Workshop machine, working as a planner or nominal director for several Tsui Hark and/or Ching Siu-tung projects. Tsui was pumping out movies like a madman in the early 90s, with 18 producer credits between 1990’s Swordsman

SPL: Sha Po Lang (Wilson Yip, 2005)

SPL: Sha Po Lang (Wilson Yip, 2005)

A rote cop/Triad story somewhat elevated by a serious commitment to operatic melodrama on the part of director Wilson Yip and composer Chan Kwong-wing. Sammo Hung is the gangster, Simon Yam the veteran cop willing to break all the rules to capture him. Donnie Yen is the new guy

Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005)

Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005)

Tsui Hark’s next major film after a CGI-driven remake of his own Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain in 2001, this is a less effects-driven wuxia epic than a riff on Seven Samurai with a Chang Cheh influence (the Northern Chinese medieval warfare of The Heroic Ones comes to