Chen Kun Movies

Two crooks with secrets up their sleeves battle for control of a Chinese town in this action comedy. It's the era of the Chinese warlords in the 1920s, and the new governor of Goosetown (Feng Xiaogang) is taking the train into town with his wife (Carina Lau) and right-hand man Tang (Ge You). However, a handful of bandits led by Pocky Zhang (Jiang Wen) want to capture the train, and the explosion they set proves bigger than they expected and the new governor is killed. Pocky realizes no one in Goosetown has seen the new governor, so he decides to take his place, and the dead governor's wife and Tang are forced to play along. Meanwhile in Goosetown, Huang (Chow Yun-Fat) is a powerful criminal who deals in slaves and opium; he's convinced one of his many enemies will kill him, so he employs a simple-minded local man who looks exactly like him (also played by Chow Yun-Fat) to serve as his decoy. When Pocky arrives in town, he goes out of his way to make friends with his new "constituents," and Huang sees he has a powerful rival for the loyalties of the community. The rivalry between Pocky and Huang escalates into a shooting war, though Huang doesn't know Pocky isn't the real governor and Pocky doesn't realize there's more than one Huang. Let the Bullets Fly was a massive box-office success in China, becoming the top-grossing domestic release of all time upon its release in 2010. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This action-fantasy opus from Hong Kong director Gordon Chan - a co-production of Hong Kong, China and Singapore with a predominantly Chinese cast - represents at least the third screen incarnation of a famous macabre Asian short story from the Qing Dynasty. (Prior versions emerged in 1966 and 1993). The setting is the Yuan Dynasty of the 13th and 14th centuries. As the tale opens, soldiers rescue a resplendent orphan girl, Xiao Wei (Zhou Xun) from desert bandits. She is taken in by General Wang (Chen Kun) and his wife Peirong (Vicki Zhao), who lavish attention on her, but three months into the unofficial adoption, a bizarre series of events befalls the city: a gruesome serial killer begins striking all over the map, killing his victims by ripping out human hearts. Deeply distrustful of the young girl and suspicious that she may actually be a bloodthirsty demon disguised as a human, Peirong summons the help of General Pan Yong (Donnie Yen), a washed-up, burnt-out alcoholic who has formally retired from military service. Lo and behold, as it turns out, Pan has befriended a Chinese ghostbuster, Xia Bing (Sun Li), who, as it turns out, has been chasing Xiao for years in revenge for her ghastly murder of one of his relatives. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

An unrequited love affair is played out against tumultuous events in Asian history in this epic-scale historical drama. Qiushui (Chen Kun) is a teacher living and working in Taipei in the mid-1940. Qiushui meets Biyun (Vivian Hsu), a beautiful young woman from a wealthy family, when he's hired to tutor her. Qiushui soon falls head over heels for Biyun, and she clearly has feelings for him; however, Qiushui's close friend Zilu (Steven Cheung) is also infatuated with Biyun, and her father Wang Tingwu (Chin Han) isn't sure if Qiushui is a good match for his daughter. Despite it all, Qiushui and Biyun begin making plans to marry, but their hopes are dashed when the Taiwanese government begins a pogrom against those on the political left, and Qiushui's activism forces him to leave the country. Several years later, Qiushui is a medic tending to wounded soldiers in Korea, and an attractive woman named Jindi (Li Bingbing) is assigned to assist him. Jindi is quite taken with Qiushui, but he hasn't been able to forget Biyun, and Jindi finds using her feminine charm to make him forget his old love is an uphill struggle. Later, in the present day, the events of sixty years earlier take on a new importance as aging artist (Chang Gua Ahleh) and his niece Isabella Leong set out to find out what became of his brother Xue. The first co-production between producers from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Yun Shui Yao (English title: The Knot) was released simultaneously in all three nations, and became a major box-office success in China. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi