Hong Kong Film Fade-Out

The Plaza Theatre in Hong Kong is playing all American films today – Shrek II, Troy, Van Helsing – and the billboards might as well be read as a story of Hollywood invasion.

Indeed, the theaters offer little in the way of sword-toting heroes flying on rooftops, gangster girls using guns and knives to take over each other's casinos, or beautiful ghosts in fabulous kimonos falling in love with handsome travelers.

As visualized through its filmmakers, Hong Kong has always offered a reliable assessment of the sensibilities of the modern East, an uninhibited wildness on the silver screen that, with its many twists and turns, is a refreshing alternative to Hollywood's cynical and formulaic happily-ever-afters.

Alas, these days you have to scour the newspapers to find a Hong Kong film – and the two playing on this day, a cheesy romance and a rehash of a gangster movie, are of poor quality compared to those produced less than a decade ago – in the Golden Age of Hong Kong movies.

What happened?

Many here blame the Hong Kong handover to China, and the attendant feelings of uncertainty – which caused a massive exodus, including the film industry's top creative talents.

"People no longer see things long-term any more. People are afraid to express themselves because they don't know what China could do to them, and the ones who are expressive are gone," said Francis Ng, a 20-something musician.

Ng says the beginning of the end of the movie industry was the departure of director John Woo, who now makes blockbuster Hollywood movies like Paycheck and Mission Impossible II. His departure was soon followed by stars like Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat – and even Jackie Chan.

"When will they come back?" Ng asks rhetorically. "Probably never. I think people like Woo find Hong Kong no longer suited to their creative talents." On the other hand, he added, showing the famous Hong Kong pragmatism, "Hollywood pays well. I would go, too, if I were invited."

Others, however, blame rampant piracy for the downturn in the local film industry. Indeed, the night market sells DVD videos, music CDs and software at bargain basement prices. The government seems helpless – raids and arrests do little to deter the long-time Hong Kong habit of copying everything, legally or illegally, and selling it dirt-cheap. So potential producers, seeing no chance for a profit, have withdrawn in droves.

Yet only a decade ago Hong Kong films kept Hollywood movies at bay.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s Hong Kong movies reminded David Overby, writing in Film Comment magazine, of Hollywood in its heyday, "before the great split between commerce and art." In 1994, for instance, Hong Kong produced 160 movies, a magnificent number for a territory of 6.4 million people.

The decisive breakthrough in action movies came in the early 1990s with Once Upon a Time in China, directed by Tsui Hark, who also produced the amazing Swordsman II, in which the characters are no longer burdened by tradition – in fact, they are not bound by gravity. Dueling fighters float like birds, wearing fanciful costumes and following a story line even more fantastic than their clothing: eccentrics absorb chi power from lesser fighters and shrink them to nothing; energy bolts come through swords to split a horse in two; a fighter achieves inhuman power but in the process turns into a beautiful woman.

These movies seem to reflect a sense of uninhibited wildness, and their characters – powerful and colorful eccentrics – are outside social norms, taking only what's good for themselves and discarding the rest.

The choreography is so stunning that it has left an indelible mark on western movies – witness the mega-hit Matrix trilogy, where all Hong Kong techniques were applied to allow the half-Asian, half-white Keanu Reeves, the movie's hero, to fly and float. Or watch Uma Thurman, as she wields her sword like an old pro in the Kill Bill movies.