by Meyers, Ric
All of these performers could be the new “king of kung fu,” but none of them are. The one who is was born the same year as Jet Li, 1963. But Jet Li’s mother was not one of the world’s greatest taichi practitioners and teachers. That would be Bow Sim-mak, who moved with her newspaperman husband, Klyster Yen, to Massachusetts in 1975. While Bruce Lee started teaching gweilo outsiders kung fu on the west coast, Bow started teaching them on the east coast. She also started teaching her son, Donnie Yen.
“I started training with my mom when I was very little,” he told me. “I learned some taichi, but mainly Northern Shaolin. But I’ve always been a rebel. When I was young, all sorts of students from different fields used to come in and kind of worship my mom, you know. And I would challenge that. I would run off to other people’s martial arts schools to train in different styles. I had a lot of friends who studied karate and a mixture of kung fu stylings, so I was exploring that. A lot of kung fu masters in Chinatown used to say to me about how my mom was so famous and so good at what she does, so why would I train in other styles? But my mom was actually kind of open to what I was doing.”
Like others, Donnie looked at the “soft” but powerful things his mom did, then looked at the “hard” things Bruce Lee did on screen, and made his decision. But that was the least of the fourteen year-old’s problems. “I ran away from home because I was having trouble at school. At about the same time the Beijing Wushu Team came to the states and were visiting every martial arts school in Chinatown. When they visited our school, my mom asked me to perform for two of their head coaches. They were very impressed and told my mother if I was trained by them for a year or two I could be a champion in China. A few months later, my mom asked if I wanted to go to China. Well, I knew that if I stayed I’d just get into more trouble, so I agreed.”
Only one problem: they didn’t check with the head coaches. “They were shocked,” Donnie explained. “They hadn’t expected me to actually arrive at their doorstep! Their training an American would get them into trouble. We went through all kinds of departments and making connections here and there. And they finally changed their policy! I was the first Asian not born in China to train with the wushu team.”
Donnie trained for two years, then was ready for the next big change in his life. “I visited Yuen Wo-ping’s sister, who used to study with my mom when she taught in Hong Kong. Her brother was making Drunken Tai Chi and was looking for a young unknown to cast in it. She told him about me, and he said, “Show me what you can do.” The whole Yuen clan was there and they shot my performance on film. About a couple of weeks later, I got the part.”
Drunken Tai Chi (1984) filmed in Taiwan for almost eight months, and reflected the crazy and corny approach Wo-ping was using at that time. “It was released head on with Project A,” Donnie remembered. “It did okay, but not as good as they wanted to. It was the end of the old-fashioned kung fu movie, and, to make matters worse, Yuen Wo-ping would think nothing of taking two years to make a film. The competition was getting a lot harder, and the audience seemed more interested in the more modern type of action flick.”
But instead of doing one of those, Donnie tried a change of pace. Mismatched Couples (1985) was a freaky and funky mid-80s romantic comedy romp that put the budding star in spandex and had him popping and locking. Little wonder that he returned to America to hide out for a year or two. “When I got back to Hong Kong, the whole dynasty of martial arts movies was divided and, clearly, Jackie Chan, Yuen Baio, and Sammo Hung were dominating the whole circle.”
So Yuen Wo-ping decided to try one of the more modern types of action flicks, helming what turned out to be one of the great “new wave” crime and corruption thrillers of the era, Tiger Cage (1988). Although the 1997 Chinese takeover of Hong Kong was still almost a decade away, the fear of what might happen was growing, and Tiger Cage tapped into that fear. It also presented a new way to picture kung fu fights.
“Yuen Wo-ping filmed Donnie’s climatic fight as if it were almost one of those fighting videogames,” recalled Vincent Lyn, who played the half-breed gweilo villain in the film. “He and his adversary were on a quay by the beach and went at each other using classic kung fu techniques while the camera tracked alongside in full body shots. I don’t know if the audience picked up on it, but they really responded, and it was perfect.” It was Donnie’s most powerful part yet, and he wanted to take full advantage of it.
“After a couple of years away, I wanted to start again as a bit more mature personality,” Donnie said. “I studied all of Jackie and Sammo’s films, looking for a way to make my own name. We had very limited budgets, so I was training very hard to bring the real flavor of martial arts into the films. When you study the Sammo Hung style of filming — which includes Jackie Chan and Yuen Kwai — you might notice a kind of concentration on the stuntman ... on the reaction rather than on the person actually throwing the kick. So I decided to have a very strong personal flavor. I’m going to try to break the rhythm of the choreography and have a lot of pre-movement before the actual kick.”
The problem there was that only Jackie and Sammo were getting the kind of filmmaking freedom Donnie, as a newcomer, was deprived of. 1989’s In the Line of Duty IV and 1990’s Tiger Cage 2, although each featuring exceptional kung fu, were uninspired otherwise. Then, because he wanted more freedom, Donnie parted company with Yuen Wo-ping, eliciting some bad feelings. Whatever the cause, he was relegated to the likes of the ludicrous Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead (1991) the middling Crystal Hunt (1991), and the rough Cheetah on Fire (1992).
“But then Yuen Wo-ping came back and asked me to help him out on Once Upon a Time in China II,” Donnie reported. “So I met with Tsui Hark and said okay. I also helped them choreograph the fight scenes.” It resulted in (arguably) the best of the series. “It only took us three days to finish the fight scenes, even with all the waiting for the fans and lighting and all the effects,” Donnie revealed. “It was actually kind of easy. Fighting in Drunken Tai Chi, with thirty-five to forty movements in one shot ... now, that was tough! I think fighting with Jet was much easier. In fact, some of it wasn’t even choreographed. We just went at it!”
Knowing a good thing when he fought it, Donnie was content to jump back and forth between Tsui Hark and Yuen Wo-ping projects for the next few years. He played another memorable villain in Dragon Gate Inn (1992), and a supreme hero in the exceptional “Young Wong Fei-hung” film, Iron Monkey (1993). “I liked doing that because it was a challenge for me to play a heroic role in the vein of Jet Li. He had already made Wong Fei-hung famous again, and although I was playing his father, I was basically playing another Wong Fei-hung. So the challenge was; how would I fight differently and still be just as impressive as Jet? So I told Yuen ‘let’s not do the no-shadow-kick technique with a lot of editing, let’s speed up the frame.’”
Donnie continued to work with Yuen in Hero Among Heroes (1993) and Wing Chun (1994), but he also continued studying film, and looking for opportunities to produce and direct his own projects. That desire led to some critical drubbings. “Iron Monkey II was a big mistake,” he admitted, “but I needed the money. Unfortunately I did a number of pictures I’m not proud of simply because I needed the paycheck. In Hong Kong, I had a reputation for turning down films, but when I needed the paycheck, I had to sell my soul. But I still think that I have done less poor films than many others, so that makes me feel a little better.”
His fans also felt much better when he turned to good television rather than bad films like Circus Kids (1994), Satan Returns (1996), High Voltage (1997), and Black Rose 2 (1997). “I didn’t want to do TV because I didn’t expect to have the kind of freedom in terms of choreography and production support that I had in films. But when they told me I would be working with my good friend Benny Chan, the director of The Big Bullet, I agreed to talk about it. So I did The Kungfu Master and the ratings went straight up. So they asked me to do another series. And I said, if I’m going to do another one I’m goin
g to have more control. Let’s do a Bruce Lee series, because he’s my idol.
“Everybody was affected by Bruce Lee. At first I just watched his films, but stayed away from his style in real life. Then, as my martial art skill matured, I came back to his philosophy. So I worked on the Fist of Fury TV series for seven months, even though I was only being paid for three months’ work. I wanted to revolutionize TV action fighting editing. I had total control on the action editing, and was very proud of it, because the Fist of Fury series had the highest rating ever, and made the most money of any series ever telecast on the ATV channel.”
Donnie wanted to keep that feeling of freedom going, so he directed and choreographed his next three personal projects: Legend of the Wolf (1997), Ballistic Kiss (1998) and Shanghai Affairs (1998). “I’m very proud of Legend of the Wolf and Ballistic Kiss, because both were made for less than $HK4,000,000, and, pound for pound, they look far more expensive in terms of production value. Once Upon a Time in China II cost $40,000,000! There were a lot of problems getting them made and distributed, so I was quite proud to get them out. I only made Shanghai Affairs because I needed the money for Ballistic Kiss!”
By then it seemed that Donnie had done everything he wanted in Hong Kong, so he broadened his horizons … with a little help from his friends. “Michelle Yeoh is a great friend and, indeed, the best female martial artist actress in the world. She’s a workaholic — very tough and daring. A complete woman — sincere and down to earth. She told everybody in Hollywood about me.” And they responded by giving Donnie parts in Highlander: Endgame (2000), Blade II (2002), and Shanghai Knights (2003) with Jackie Chan. But Yen quickly discovered that if working in Hong Kong was a rocky field, working in Hollywood was a fur-lined prison. The freedom to experiment and create was just not tinseltown’s way.
Thankfully by then, Zhang Yimou had come calling, and Donnie was to add his small, but integral piece to Hero. “Obviously it was pretty clear that they wanted the most anticipated action scene between Jet and I since Once Upon a Time in China II,” he told me. “So we had a lot of discussion on how best to do that scene. We actually spent twenty-two days shooting that. Normally, especially in Asian films, the time and budget is always constrained. But when we were there, the producer would come in and say ‘Take your time. We don’t want the best scene … we want the best of the best scene!’
“So, with every shot, both Jet and myself would really work at doing the absolute best possible and decide the right way to do it. Because we knew we not only have to top ourselves in Once Upon a Time in China II, but we also, half-jokingly, half-seriously, wanted to top the Michelle Yeoh/Zhang Ziyi fight scene in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. So a lot of times Jet and I would joke around, saying, hey, no offense to the women, but we can’t lose it to Michelle and Zhang! So we really took our time to really nail every shot.”
It paid off, but, ironically, it required the filmmakers to lessen Donnie’s contribution to a previous scene, so as not to lessen the power of his sequence with Jet. “They cut down the sequence between me and the seven Qin warriors,” Donnie recalled. “At first, after I defeated all of them, I went to the blind musician, gave him some money and asked him to play another song. Only after that did I start to walk out, and then stop when I hear Jet calling me. But when I saw the film, I knew something was missing.”
Hero’s international success gave Donnie’s career even more credibility, which he had already taken advantage of by choreographing both a Japanese film (2001’s The Princess Blade) and a German TV show (2000’s Code Name: The Puma). As much as he enjoyed the experiences in Europe and America, there was no place like home, so Donnie returned to South China with renewed vigor and intent. His work began to pay off with The Twins Effect (2003) — a film originally designed just to exploit the fame of a popular singing duo (Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung).
“I really put in a lot of effort to train and mold the girls there — trying to really bring up the level of Hong Kong-style action films. Now, I’ve shot a lot of action involving women before, but Twins Effect was something else. They’d never shot any action films before, not to mention they’re very new at this. It was a big challenge, because I really wanted them to look convincing. You know, a lot of Hong Kong films are known to be able to shoot anybody doing a kung fu scene and make them look half-decent, but I didn’t want to do that. I really wanted them to shine and make them unique. I really wanted to bring out the best in them and challenge myself.”
The same was true with co-star Ekin Cheng. “He’s done a lot of action movies, but I didn’t want him to look like he was just doing another one, I wanted him to look new and refreshed and different. Then, there was the pressure of action-directing Jackie Chan’s cameo sequence. You know, either he’s choreographed himself or by Sammo Hung, so there’s a certain expectation and standard there. So I wanted to shoot Jackie so I could retain his style while blending it into my own vision. Well, shooting Jackie and Ekin and the Twins was a great challenge, which I’m very pleased with. The Twins are known as little, petite, fragile girls. But they really kick butt.”
The newly anointed action stars took Donnie’s lessons to heart in their subsequent film, House of Fury (2005), co-starring and directed by Jackie Chan protégé Stephen Fung, and choreographed by Yuen Wo-ping. Donnie, meanwhile, made a career-defining alliance with director Wilson Yip Wai-shun. Yip, who had been known for his eclectic career of horror, erotic, and comedy, collaborated with Donnie on a crime thriller that bore an odd and awkward name: Sha Po Lang (aka Kill Zone, 2005) — words that represent three stars in Chinese astrology: the “Seven Killings” power star, the “Army Breaker” ruinous star, and the “Greedy Wolf” flirting star.
Originally the film, aka SPL, was going to be a straight thriller, but once Sammo Hung was cast as a family-loving mob boss, Wu Jing as a mainland Chinese hitman, and Donnie was also on board as choreographer, superlative kung fu was added in the form of three remarkable fight scenes. The first occurs a full half-hour into the film and seems to spark off like a small physical explosion when Sammo and Donnie suddenly go at it. Having been intrigued by the possibilities of mixed martial arts being integrated into modern movies, Donnie took the opportunity to incorporate superlative ground fighting into his arsenal.
Great ground fighting returned in the climatic rematch between Donnie and Sammo, but possibly the film’s best fight occurs just prior to that, as Donnie takes on the knife-wielding hitman with only a short police baton (but, tellingly, a short baton that was still longer than a knife — in most evenly matched kung fu fights, the longer weapon wins). Donnie and Wu Jing, having both been classically trained, were beautifully matched, and meticulously slaved to create the best fight of its kind. In a season of tepid, unimaginative films, SPL stood out like the flash on a blade. Although Donnie took some time to co-star in Tsui Hark’s disappointing Seven Swords (2005), he quickly reunited with Wilson Yip for a string of increasingly successful efforts.
First out of the gate was, fittingly, Dragon Tiger Gate (2006), an attempt to have Chinese manhua (comic books) take their place alongside the likes of Batman Begins (2005) and Spider-Man (2002). The Dragon Tiger Gate comic is as successful in China as Superman was in the U.S., and Donnie did a great job training Nicholas Tse as Tiger Wong — ostensibly the star of the story — but Yen’s powerful presence shifted the film’s focus onto his character, Dragon Wong, which threw off the story’s balance. And, despite some exceptional on-screen action, Dragon’s unparalleled kung fu superiority over everything and everyone on screen also served to diminish the effectiveness of the villain.
No matter. Wilson and Donnie next tackled Flash Point (2007), which looked and played like a prequel to Sha Po Lang, although the filmmakers deny any connection. Even so, it once again featured Donnie as a superlative kung fu cop, this time taking on three vicious criminals led by Collin Chou. Chou, a Taiwan-born actor, made a sizeable impression as the villain in Jet Li’s Bodyguard from Beijing (aka
The Defender) under the name Ngai Sing, then wound up playing the part offered to Jet in The Matrix sequels, as well as portraying Jet’s father in Fearless. As such, he was well-matched with Donnie, and their face-off in the film’s final third is worth the price of admission to the otherwise familiar thriller. Taking the opportunity to further explore ground fighting’s place in kung fu action, Donnie designed a literally knock-down, drag-out, Hong Kong Film Award-winning fight that left audiences exhausted and exhilarated.
But the best was still to come. Gratified by the hard-won respect the burgeoning Chinese film industry was showing him, Donnie took some time to co-star in Ching Siu-tung’s familiar war epic An Empress and the Warriors (2008) and Gordon Chan’s uninspired historical horror fantasy Painted Skin (2008) before returning to the Wilson Yip fold for, quite possibly, the most important film of his transformed career.
Many of the people who Bruce Lee most influenced and inspired were saddened that the icon never got the opportunity to fully mature. Many true kung fu sifus recognize the classic pattern: youthful aggression (wanting to win everything), adult denial (straining your body in an attempt to ignore age), middle-aged acceptance (inward exploration to fully develop your chi), and mature wisdom (using your ever-developing balance to attain ultimate ability). Given that Bruce died at the height of his aggression, his followers continue to pay homage to that version of him … including Donnie. But then art-filmmaker extraordinaire Wong Kar-wei announced that he intended to make a movie about Bruce Lee’s wing chun teacher, Yip Man.
