Obituary | Benny Chan, action film director behind some of the pop-culture landmarks of recent Hong Kong cinema
- Raised on action films, Chan started in TV before getting his big break in the film industry with the first feature he directed, 1990’s A Moment of Romance
- Known internationally for New Police Story, starring Jackie Chan, he made critical favourites such as The White Storm and pop-culture gems such as Gen-X Cops
Benny Chan Muk-sing, who died on Sunday at the age of 58, was responsible for several of the best Hong Kong action movies of the past 30 years. It was a genre he had loved since he was a child, when he often binged on inexpensive Shaw Brothers matinees.
Yet the master of frenetic, explosive big-screen action was as mild-mannered as could be in person.
Remembering Benny Chan: action director’s top five films
Chan’s big break came in 1990, when his debut feature as a director, A Moment of Romance, was a critical and commercial hit. Produced by his mentor To, it proved to be one of the most recognisable Hong Kong films of the 1990s. One of its characters, Wah Dee, a sympathetic gangster portrayed by Andy Lau Tak-wah, would come to be known as an icon of Hong Kong cinema.
Chan alternated between film and television in the 1990s, and earned the first of his five best director nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards for Big Bullet in 1996.
In the two decades that followed, he directed both pop-culture landmarks, such as 1999’s Gen-X Cops, and New Police Story, and critical favourites, such as 2005 film Divergence and 2013’s The White Storm . Occasionally he managed both at the same time.
Chan was forever telling interviewers about his desire to make something other than action films, only for his investors to offer yet another action movie project. “When they come to Benny Chan, it must be about the action,” he once told this writer.
The last of his films released before his untimely death, a family farce called Meow (2017), appeared to have satisfied that wish. It was a critical dud that, if nothing else, proved how sweet-natured Chan was at heart.
Andy Lau (who Chan also directed in Shaolin) and Louis Koo (a frequent collaborator since Rob-B-Hood) expressed their sadness in comments to Chinese-language Hong Kong media. Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, who was named best actor at the Golden Horse Awards – known as the Oscars of Chinese-language cinema – for his role in Divergence, and who once admitted to this writer that the 2005 film reinvented him as an actor, bade farewell to Chan in an Instagram post that called him a “respected director”.
Actor-turned director Stephen Fung, who starred in Gen-X Cops and its sequel Gen-Y Cops in 2000, which featured a supporting role for Paul Rudd, later to find fame as the star of Ant-Man , wrote on Instagram: “Shocked to hear the passing of Director Benny Chan. Not only was he a strong force behind Hong Kong cinema. He was Kind, Moral, a True Gentleman. We will miss you. Rest In Peace.”
As well as being one of the best action-film directors Hong Kong cinema has seen, Chan will be remembered as a very nice person indeed. When this writer told the director in person in 2010 – in the first of three memorable interviews over the years – that he was living up to his reputation as one of the most down-to-earth Hong Kong filmmakers, he tried to sound tough.
“Not really. I’m very harsh,” he retorted with a laugh.
I countered: “When compared to your films, you’re much less …”. Chan cut me off: “ … fiery? But I’m really fiery!”
Whatever the truth, he will be sorely missed.
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