Famous Hong Kong movie director, born in 1951, who is best known for his cinematography in his over-the-top action films. English-speakers who don't speak Cantonese can pronounce his name choy hock and from what I understand, that's pretty close.

Some of his best-known movies include his 1983 film "Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain"; the Swordsman trilogy; the smash hit film "Once Upon a Time in China"; and his romantic action-comedies 'Shanghai Blues" and "Peking Opera Blues".

Hark and fellow Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo have both played major roles in focusing international attention on the world of Hong Kong cinema. He has also been credited with introducing high-tech Hollywood special effects to the Hong Kong movie industry.

Unfortunately, Tsui Hark's first foray into Hollywood hasn't been very good. Like John Woo (a former business partner of his), Hark was called to direct a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie several years ago. The movie turned out to be "Double Team" which co-starred Dennis Rodman and Mickey Rourke. The movie was, to put it mildly, awful. For some strange reason, Hark decided to do another Van Damme movie which resulted in "Knock Off" being filmed. And to be as diplomatic as possible about that movie, it was worse than the previous one. After that, Hark went back to Hong Kong and resumed his production and directing duties there. By the way, in case you were wondering about why Woo and Hark never work together anymore, it's a well-known secret that they battled over the production of Woo's masterpiece "The Killer". Hark appparently hated the film, thought it was a waste of time, and made Woo's life miserable during the filming of it. When the movie ended up a box office and critical success, Hark switched faces and attempted to get as much glory for the film as he could, even though his contribution to it was very minimal.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.