Lifetime Achievement: Sammo Hung

 

Hung was born in Hong Kong in 1952 into a family with a rich film heritage – one grandfather, Hung Chung-ho, was a director and the other was a film set builder, and his grandmother Chin Tsiang was an actress – and he took his first steps into entertainment as a child. At age 9, Hung started seven years of training in a Peking opera school run by master Yu Jim-yuen and became part of its “Seven Little Fortunes” troupe. 

 

The young performers, highly skilled in martial arts and acrobatics, counted among their ranks talents including Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah and Corey Yuen, who would, like Hung, become key filmmakers over subsequent decades. 

 

Hung’s first screen credit arrived in 1961, with a child-actor role in the Cathay studio’s Education of Love, and a few years later he found work in the action area. Early efforts, many at the Shaw Brothers studio, included work as a martial arts stuntman and extra as well as assisting noted action choreographer Han Ying-chieh before progressing to credited action director with The Golden Sword in 1969. 

 

Hung later joined the Golden Harvest studio in 1970, where he would take his action directing to new heights with projects like King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) before hopping into the director’s chair for the 1977 martial arts flick The Iron Fisted Monk, with himself as lead actor. In the role of director, and later producer, Hung hit his stride as a trendsetter in Hong Kong cinema, unafraid to experiment with new formulas. 

 

With subsequent directorial works like Enter the Fat Dragon (1978), Knockabout (1979) and The Prodigal Son (1981), Hung displayed a talent for kung fu comedy and helped popularise the form. And by the early 1980s Hung was a leading figure in shifting martial arts into contemporary settings with popular works like Carry on Pickpocket (1982) and the subsequent “Lucky Stars” entertainers that started with Winners and Sinners (1983), setting the tone for modern action- comedy thrills to come. 

 

Another new sensation arrived with Spooky Encounters (1980), the inaugural work from Hung’s Bo Ho film company. Hung fluidly integrated the occult with both martial arts and comedy in the film, and the mix went further when he produced Wu Ma’s The Dead and the Deadly (1983) and Ricky Lau’s fan-favourite Mr Vampire (1985). Hung was similarly a forerunner in the girls-with-guns line of filmmaking: he produced Corey Yuen’s Yes, Madam! (1985), which sparked a trend for female-led contemporary action. 

 

Also a founding partner of D & B Films plus the founder of a further company of his own, Bojon Films, Hung went on to show his versatility with more multi-genre directing for pictures including the star-studded caper Millionaires’ Express (1986), the war action saga Eastern Condors (1987) and the martial arts comedy-drama Pedicab Driver (1989). Hung’s experimentation and flexibility can be seen through his action choreography too. His Warriors Two (1978) and The Prodigal Son for instance applied the wing chun form of martial arts after he conducted research and took lessons on the style to help in devising action. 

 

And in the 1990s, his work on Jeff Lau’s nutty comedy The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993) and Wong Kar-wai’s complex Ashes of Time (1994), two very different works drawn from the same literary source, exemplified hugely diverse action approaches in wuxia cinema. While his career grew as director, producer, action director and writer, Hung’s star status as an actor rose in tandem thanks to his extreme agility as a martial artist, charming comic skills and personable onscreen demeanour. 

 

Hung became a regular lead in his own productions and those by contemporaries like Jackie Chan, whose stunt-heavy action-adventure hit Project A (1983) saw Hung (also action director) share main actor duties with Chan and Yuen Biao. 

 

Recognition of his wide-ranging acting talent has come in the form of Best Actor wins at the Hong Kong Film Awards for Carry on Pickpocket and Painted Faces (1988), an Alex Law-directed drama based on the story of Hung’s Peking opera master. After a making a couple of major actioners released in 1997 – Once Upon a Time in China and America (co-director and action choreographer) starring Jet Li and the Jackie Chan vehicle Mr Nice Guy (director and cameo) – Hung made a shift to TV in North America. 

 

There he starred as the lead in the primetime action and crime series Martial Law (1998 to 2000) before making a return to Hong Kong film. In the years since, Hung has focused chiefly on action choreography and acting, sometimes taking on both roles to great success. Among the highlights is Wilson Yip’s Ip Man 2 (2010), for which Hung devised scenes of star Donnie Yen pummelling foes and also took a commanding role as a martial arts grandmaster. Other notable recent films with his action directing include Tsui Hark’s high-budget action fantasy Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), and earlier this year his action upped the entertainment in Soi Cheang’s blockbuster The Monkey King 2. 

 

For his latest picture, The Bodyguard, released this April, Hung has made a long-awaited return to directing after an extended break from the role. Leading the cast as a retired public security officer and handling action choreography as well, Hung mixes action – both comic and dark – with gentle drama in the film, and once more reaffirms his ability to shake up genre blends in big-screen entertainment.