17-12-08 : FAN’S THE MAN

Siu-wong finally gets to shine in ‘Ip Man’.

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Last night I attended the premiere of the new kung fu epic ‘Ip Man’, in which my old friend Donnie Yen delivers the performance of his career as the eponymous Wing Chun maestro (and teacher to Bruce Lee). In the lobby of the JP Theatre, I ran into Simon Yam, who couldn’t stay to watch the film as he was due on the set of the new Johnnie To movie. Also in the Ip Ma cast, and on hand for the event, was martial arts actor Fan Siu-wong.

I’ve known of Fan Siu-wong since I first saw his performance, as a skinny child star, in Corey Yuen’s Above The Law. It stars American kung fu queen Cynthia Rothrock (remember her?), who I was co-managing at the time. Fan plays a precocious brat who gets a memorable death scene on the prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Kowloon waterfront. What I didn’t know at the time was that Siu-wong (known variously as Terry or Louis!) is the son of Fan Mui-san, a burly character actor best known to kung fu fans for his ‘drunken master’ turn in Sammo Hung’s Magnificent Butcher.

Flash forward a mere five years, and its ‘who’s that guy?’ as a muscular Fan Siu-wong returns to the jade screen in the title role of Story of Riki, an ultra-violent manga adaptation. Siu-wong plays a martial arts expert framed and sent to a futuristic prison where inmates brutalize each other at will. The film was considered so over the top at the time; it was initially shelved by Golden Harvest, and then given a limited Hong Kong release, to the combined horror of the public and the critics. It has since become a cult movie, but that didn’t help Fan at the time. The film was generally regarded as a career killer.

Fortunately, Rumble in the Bronx director Stanley Tong noted Siu-wong’s talent, and cast him as a kung fu Tarzan in his directorial debut Stone Age Warriors (whatever happened to that film?) and one of Michelle Yeoh’s fellow lawmen in his semi-sequel to Supercop, Project S. The actor’s other supporters included directors like Danny Lee, who cast Fan in Organised Crime and Trial Bureau, and Brandy Yuen (brother to Yuen Woo-ping),  who gave him a major role in his much underrated Master of Zen. (Incidentally and ironically, the part Siu-wong played in the latter was originally offered to Donnie Yen.)

Everyone seemed to be fans of Fan, except the all-important movie going public. He enjoyed much greater success as a TV martial arts star. I really liked his TVB series Fist Power (AKA Iron Fist), where he plays Hung Kuen legend Wong Kay-ying (okay, I’m biased!). I had recently moved to Hong Kong, was deep into kung fu training and used to tape (yes, tape!) the show every evening.

Meanwhile, Siu-wong was busting some amazing moves on the big screen, but in low-budget schlock like Over for Death Games (I’d love to have sung a pseudo-007-style title song for that one…) When I worked at Media Asia, I kept pushing him for roles, but the perception of Fan was that he had failed as a film actor, and could only work on TV. (By the way, that was the same response I got when I pushed Donnie Yen, and look what happened to his career recently. Young actors reading this: you need stamina to stay in this game…)

In the wake of the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the former incarnation of TWC, Miramax, snapped up the rights to Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger (no, really…) in which Siu-wong co-starred with Cheng Pei-pei and Sammo Hung. Producers across Asia began to retitle their films accordingly. ( Leaping Lizard, Diving Duck etc)

Fan Siu-wong made the move into action directing with a low-budget riff on Kung Fu Hustle, Kung Fu Fighter, in which he also played an impressive bad guy, and stars opposite Sammo (again) in the upcoming Kung Fu Cooks (which echoes Stephen Chiau’s God of Cookery). Based on his work in the former, I started recommending him for choreographing gigs as well.

Given his talents and good nature, I always felt Fan Siu-wong deserved some better breaks than the industry had given him. That’s why I was delighted when he was cast opposite Donnie in a ‘dream team’ production that saw Sammo Hung (helmer of the Wing Chun-themed classics Warriors Two and Prodigal Son) choreograph Yen in ‘Ip Man’. I was lucky enough to catch a very early screening of the film, and it was terrific to see Louis (or Terry, depending what day of the week it is…) deliver the goods, both dramatically and as a screen fighter. Even that notorious perfectionist Donnie Yen was effusive in his praise. Hopefully, Ip Man will give audiences greater recognition of Siu-wong’s prodigious talents. Its about time!

 Its the Bey and Louis Show...!