![Image](https://i.ibb.co/Pw8YdF6/1-A0-Ykf-NEo-Oq037wd-E94k9w.jpg)
Emotion is the most essential element in my films. By taking many shots from different angles, I can bring out the emotions of a scene.
Filmography
Features (*=screenwriter)
The Butterfly Murders (1979)
We're Going to Eat You / Hell Has No Gates* (1980)
Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind / Don't Play with Fire* (1980)
All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution* (1981)
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)
Search for the Gods (1983)
Shanghai Blues (1984)
Aces Go Places 3 / Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street (1984)
Working Class (1985)
Peking Opera Blues (1986)
I Love Maria / Roboforce (1988) [uncredited; co-directed with David Chung]
The Big Heat (1988) [uncredited; co-directed with Johnnie To and Kam Yeung-Wah]
A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon* (1989)
The Swordsman (1990) [uncredited; co-directed with King Hu, Raymond Lee, and Ching Siu-Tung]
The Raid (1991)* [co-directed with Ching Siu-Tung]
A Chinese Ghost Story III* (1991) [uncredited; co-directed with Ching Siu-Tung]
King of Chess (1991) [uncredited; co-directed with Yim Ho]
Once Upon a Time in China* (1991)
The Banquet* (1991) [co-directed with Alfred Cheung, Joe Cheung, and Clifton Ko]
Twin Dragons / Brother vs. Brother* (1992) [co-directed with Ringo Lam]
Once Upon a Time in China II* (1992)
The Master* (1992)
Once Upon a Time in China III* (1992)
Dragon Inn* (1992) [uncredited; co-directed with Raymond Lee and Ching Siu-Tung]
Green Snake* (1993)
The Lovers (1994)
Once Upon a Time in China V (1994)
The Chinese Feast (1995)
Love in the Time of Twilight (1995)
The Blade (1995)
Tristar* (1996)
Double Team (1997)
Knock Off (1998)
Time and Tide* (2000)
The Legend of Zu / Zu Warriors* (2001)
Black Mask 2: City of Masks (2002)
Seven Swords* (2005)
Triangle* (2007) [co-directed with Ringo Lam and Johnnie To]
Missing* (2008)
All About Women* (2008)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate* (2011)
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon* (2013)
The Taking of Tiger Mountain* (2014)
Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back* (2017)
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018)
The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) [co-directed with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam]
The Battle at Lake Changjin II / Water Gate Bridge (2022) [co-directed with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam]
The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great Hero (forthcoming)
Shorts
"Of a Cause" (2003) [segment, 1:99 Shorts]
"Conversation in Depth" (2014) [segment, Septet: the Story of Hong Kong]
Television
Spirit Chaser Aisha (1986)
"The Final Victory" — Once Upon a Time in China / Wong Fei Hung Series (1996)
"The Ideal Century" — Once Upon a Time in China / Wong Fei Hung Series (1996)
Books
The Cinema of Tsui Hark by Lisa Morton (2001)
Web Resources
2000 interview with Stephen Short, Time
2001 interview with IGN
2001 interview with Ryan Mottesheard, IndieWire
2011 interview with Grady Hendrix, Film Comment (Part 1)
2011 interview with Grady Hendrix, Film Comment (Part 2)
Forum Resources
Hong Kong Cinema
1103 Once Upon a Time in China: The Complete Films
Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005)
_________
Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980)
A grimy, nihilistic film about urban despair, terrorism, and sociopathy. Three bored kids set off bombs in public places for fun. A cruel young woman witnesses it and blackmails them into further antisocial acts. Despite the bleakness of the material, there’s something transfixing about the story, its energy and degradation. The Kowloon slums are an oppressive setting, cramped, dirty, claustrophobic, and lend an atmosphere of stifling inescapability. Tho it’s claimed the film was inspired by the unrest of 1967, it’s hard to form any coherent political message or even themes from the movie. The film implies the social conditions of HK breed disaffection and antisocial behaviour among the youth, but no further connection to politics is made. From the little I know, the 1967 riots were explicitly ideological. So is Tsui accusing the 1967 rioters of being just angry young people full of antisocial fervour, their specific ideology only an outlet for a more general nihilistic desire to burn it all down? Who knows. You have to make the connections yourself. The subject and political connections seem more like a pretext to make an angry, aggressive movie about violence and destruction. Yet the energetic cynicism is fascinating and I find the film lingering with me. But I doubt I’ll ever watch it again: the film contains heinous scenes of unsimulated animal torture, and everyone involved in that is reprehensible and can go fuck themselves.
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)
Tsui’s huge blockbuster success, a special effects extravaganza that helped set the tone and style for wuxia films for a decade or more (helped along by Tsui’s role as producer of many such films). Here begins Tsui’s fixation on energy and momentum over narrative coherence. We whip from location to location, battle to battle, character to character with only the barest connective tissue between it all. That headlong, freewheeling energy is exactly the reason to watch. So much colour and verve, you can hardly catch your breath.
Green Snake (1993)
A lush, romantic fantasy and morality play based on an old Chinese folk tale of two snakes, one green, one white, who become human, fall in love, and learn the ways of the world. I understand the story is usually told from the older white snake’s perspective, while Tsui takes Green Snake as his central character. The movie is so committed to its naïve mode of story telling that if you can’t give yourself over to its rhythm, the whole thing is going to seem hopelessly ridiculous. Astonishing painterly compositions sit alongside early-90s music video cheese in a way I found charming and fun, but will set others’ teeth on edge. The film struck a surprisingly down note in the end: people, for all their vast systems of religion and ethics, for all their righteousness, can’t seem to figure out what they mean by “love” tho’ they go on and on about it.
The Blade (1995)
A riff on Chang Cheh’s One Armed Swordsman. Tsui abandons his usual aesthetic for something more raw and chaotic, and also more expressionistic. The shots are choppy and shaky, often using handheld pans within scenes documentary-style; the cinematography is grainy, and the colours muted and dark, tho’ sharp moments of primary colours will hit the screen to accentuate an emotion. The plot is a familiar family revenge saga: orphan discovers his father had been brutally murdered, goes nuts, looses an arm, abandons the world, is called back to it, becomes a great fighter, gets revenge on father’s murderer. Like most Tsui movies, the style is the reason to watch.
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
A Sherlock Holmes-style historical mystery mixed with wuxia action. A couple court functionaries suffer spontaneous human combustion, and Dee, a former investigator in prison for rebelling against the new Empress, is recalled to solve the case. The Holmesian rational mystery solving stuff sits oddly in a universe with talking deer, six-armed musicians, and roaming gods and spirits. More than a Tsui Hark film, what this most resembles is the Guy Ritchie Sherlock actioners that were coming out at the same time. The movie feels bland and mundane, not helped by the flat, overlit cinematography and stiff, overbright CGI. Considering it’s Tsui Hark, one of HKs great stylists, I’m at a loss at how visually unappealing the film is. Was it shot on digital? The film seems bleached of texture and tone; everything has the same flat, enervated look. I’m unsurprised this got no reaction even from Tsui fans—it’s bland, inoffensive entertainment, distinguishable from endless Hollywood blockbusters only by its being Chinese. Also, one of the characters is named Donkey Wang. And not as a joke
Detective Dee: the Four Heavenly Kings (2018)
A prequel to the previous film. More a fantasy action cum political thriller with a mystery subplot. The future Empress plots against Dee by hiring a cadre of mercenaries with special skills to steal his magic mace, a loss that would leave him open to official censure as it was granted by the Emperor. Tsui has a fun way of conveying clues and showing Dee working out what happened entirely through visuals. Tsui’s really upped his game as a director of mysteries, which makes it somewhat a shame that he mostly abandons the detective aspect after the first act. Dee spends much of his time on the sidelines, calmly and inexplicably two steps ahead of everyone while his underlings or friends, ie. the audience surrogates, struggle to catch up. The cinematography remains consistently overbright in every scene, robbing the film of any texture, the compositions are mostly workmanlike, and the CGI is bad. And yet I had fun watching this one: it’s a more lively film, unconstrained by the mundane Guy Ritchie business of the first. Still, as with the first, it’s essentially pro-ruling class. Not full-throatedly; there is some hesitation: rulers can be mistaken, they can be misguided, even manipulated; but ultimately, rulers are good and necessary and will do the right thing, indeed are the only ones we can trust to hold civilization together. Neither movie goes as far as outright propaganda (tho’ Tsui has made some before, eg. Once Upon a Time in China II), but they are careful not to insult the ruling class while ensuring opposition is demonized.