Some Thoughts about Hollywood and Tony Leung Chiu-wai

Okay, so during the summer, I have a lot of free time that I tend to take advantage of with copious movie-watching.  Among my numerous movie-watching pushes (MCU, Harry Potter, Jane Austen) was a rewatch of Wong Kar-wai’s movies and, incidentally, the other Chinese movies I own (Hero and Red Cliff, which I lately reviewed.)  Translation?  I watched a lot of movies featuring Hong Kong actor/Wong Kar-wai’s favorite person Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

As I tend to do whenever I revisit one of Leung’s movies, I found myself being bowled over afresh by what a tremendous actor he is.  I thought, as I have before, “I’d love to see him in a Hollywood film.  I wonder why he’s never been in one before?”

Now, the official word on that, as per the interviews he does with U.S. reporters whenever one of his movies gets a significant American release, is that he’s waiting for the right role.  But of course, the idea behind that is much more loaded than simply being a matter of picking the best film with which to make a Hollywood debut.  Because around the same time as I was watching these movies and thinking these thoughts, the first trailer for The Great Wall – a.k.a. Matt Damon fights monsters in ancient China – came out.  And yes, I know, Chinese co-production, more complicated stuff at work, we don’t know if Damon is actually playing the lead role like the trailer suggests he does, I get all that.  But riding in on the back of Ghost in the Shell, Doctor Strange, Aloha, and all that rest, while I was marinating in all this Hong Kong excellence, I thought about The Great Wall trailer more for the picture it paints and the depressing truth it reveals.  And even though I already knew this on an intellectual level, it still hit me hard to think those words in clear block letters:  Tony Leung Chiu-wai has never done a Hollywood movie because Hollywood doesn’t have a clue what it would do with him.

True, there have been big-name Chinese actors with Hollywood careers in years past – Jackie Chan and Jet Li are the main ones that spring to mind – but when it comes to Asian movie stars getting big work in the U.S. right now (whether they’re from Asia or America,) there are ludicrously-few to speak of, even though there absolutely should be more.  Since Harold & Kumar, all of John Cho’s most substantial roles have been on television, not film, and TV similarly offers meatier work to the likes of Constance Wu, Daniel Dae Kim, and Lucy Liu, to name my favorites.  I’d say maybe the biggest Asian name in American movies is Rinko Kikuchi?  In recent years, she’s had a sizable role in Pacific Rim and played the lead in Kumiko the Treasure Hunter.  But the roles are few and far between.

I started trying to think of major Hollywood releases that either featured majority Asian casts or starred Asian leads.  In my absolutely non-scientific ponderings, I came up with fewer than a dozen since 2000, including Memoirs of a Geisha, Letters from Iwo Jima, the Harold & Kumar movies, and the Jackie Chan and Jet Li movies I could think of off the top of my head.  I know I’ve missed some, but the point is that there are very, very few.  We’re still at a point where, when it comes to major roles, an Asian actor is almost never going to be considered if the part isn’t specifically written to be Asian, and Hollywood doesn’t have a whole lot of interest in telling stories about Asian people (and, side note, on the rare occasions that it does, it tends to tell stories in Asia rather than the U.S.)  Not to mention, the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Emma Stone, and others have shown us that, even if a part is specifically meant to be Asian, that still doesn’t mean it’ll actually go to an Asian actor.

Let’s come back to Tony Leung Chiu-wai.  If you’re not familiar with him, he’s a big star in Hong Kong, a versatile leading man/sex symbol.  Granted, I’ve only seen a small portion of his work (heavily weighted by Wong Kar-wai,) but I’ve seen enough to know the wide range of films and roles that are open to him.  Even just in my limited sample, he’s played cops, journalists, husbands, assassins, playboys, soldiers, kung fu masters, lovers, waylaid tourists.  He’s played gay characters.  He’s played blind characters (several times, in fact.  Is this something he’s known for, or does Chinese cinema just have a penchant for movies about blind people?)  He’s done drama, comedy, action, romance, and wuxia, period pieces and contemporary.

Long story short, he’s a terrific leading man.  He’s Bradley Cooper, or Leonardo DiCaprio (in Infernal Affairs, he originated the role Leo later played in its remake, The Departed) – heck, he’s Matt Damon.  The Hong Kong film industry is his oyster, and he has his pick of great roles.  He’s frequently the star of the movies he’s in, and when he’s not, it’s usually because his supporting role is just as cool as the lead.

With all that stardom, all that choice, what does Hollywood have to offer him?  Which of his own movies could he have been cast in if they’d have been made in Hollywood?  In Hong Kong, he doesn’t play the “Chinese” cop/soldier/lover.  It’s just cop.  Soldier.  Lover.  Just a person who, yes, is Chinese.  He doesn’t have to wait around for a part that needs to be Chinese or, barring that, take whatever parts are insignificant enough that an Asian actor can be considered.  Thinking of assorted leading-man roles that have come out of Hollywood in recent years, I can come up with plenty that Leung would’ve played the crap out of, but how many that he conceivably could have been cast in?

Because I’d rather do something positive than think something depressing, I’ve decided to channel that Hollywood frustration into expanding the small portion of Leung’s films that I’ve seen.  In part because he’s amazing and rewatching him in so many films this summers made me want to see more, and in part because I want to enjoy seeing him play the same range of characters that are open to white leading men here in Hollywood.  In terms of the blog, it won’t be a weekly feature – immediately after the summer isn’t an ideal time to start a new movie-watching push – but expect periodic Leung-centric reviews in the vein of my Peter Capaldi reviews before his debut as the Twelfth Doctor.  Look for them under the title “A Little TLC(w)” (‘cause it’s my blog, and I’ll give my features dorky names if I want to.)