Billy Chow Movies

Yuen Woo Ping's martial arts action film The Tai Chi Master stars Jacky Wu as a young man named Wu who leaves his home in order to learn Tai Chi. However the Tai Chi master refuses to teach Wu because Wu is not of the proper lineage. The master's daughter secretly teaches Wu one of the signature moves, but is forced to teach him everything her father knows after her father is kidnapped. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Hong Kong filmmaker Ching Siu-tung directed this lavish epic adventure set simultaneously in the present and in 1930s China, with the entire cast playing dual roles. International action star Jet Li plays Chow Si-kit, a bookish novelist whose writing is adversely affected by his problematic relationship with his wife Monica (Rosamund Kwan). Chow is best known for a series of books under the "King of Adventurers" banner in which his courageous alter-ego, an adventurer patterned on Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark, uses his impressive martial-arts skills and prodigious cunning to fight the Japanese. Chow's personal life is threatening his deadline, however, so his assistants Shing (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Yvonne (Charlie Yeung) decide to help him out by setting up a story line, which is then played out for the viewer. Hero Chow (Li again) is asked to purloin a letter from the Japanese embassy by the Chinese government. Writer Chow is upset that the story's heroine, Cammy (Kwan again) reminds him of Monica, so he makes her a villain. Chow and Shing's 1930s alter-egos, meanwhile, are looking for a magical box (not unlike the Lost Ark of the Covenant in the film's model) which can be used to divine the future or -- if the necessary safeguards are not followed -- bring evil onto whoever opens it. The box is also being sought by the Japanese military and a group of criminals called the Salt Gang, whose leader (Ngai Sing) makes the mistake of opening it without taking steps to protect himself. Monica then takes over the writing and sends the characters to the magical scripture which can help them use the box's power to defeat their enemies. Another version of the film cuts all of the modern-day material and adds new 1930s footage to explain the abrupt shifts in story line caused by the intervention of the multiple authors. Law Kar-ying co-stars with Billy Chow. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Jet Li stars in this historical Hong Kong action film, as Chen Zhen, a Chinese student in Japan in the 1920s. When his master is killed during the Japanese occupation of China, he returns to avenge his teacher's death. Back in China, he finds himself caught in the escalating racial tensions between the Chinese and the Japanese. The martial arts sequences in this 1994 film are handled more seriously than flashy acrobatics of other kung fu epics of the time and are perhaps a better showcase for Li's awe-inspiring fighting abilities. This story is inspired heavily by Bruce Lee's classic Fists of Fury. ~ Jonathan E. Laxamana, All Movie Guide

Lee Tso nam spins this cheapie action-comedy exploitation flick. Li Min-feng (Moon Lee) and her partner, Grace, are undercover cops working as nightclub hostesses hoping to apprehend a lunatic who is victimizing women of said profession. When Grace learns a secret she shouldn't have, the two become embroiled in a vicious underworld struggle for power. Brother Bee is a fantastically ambitious junior gangster who scrapes his way to the top by killing his superiors -- including his own father. This weapon of choice is a crack Japanese hitwoman (Yukari Oshima) who accomplished each mission with grim professionalism. When Bee realizes his ambitions and becomes his gang's top dog, he learns that the Japanese yakuza has put a hit out on him for an arms deal that went bad. Meanwhile Grace gets murdered when she tries to arrest the gangster. Vowing revenge, Min-feng buys a small arsenal of weapons -- including a small rocket launcher -- and strikes out against the gang. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide