Jacky Cheung, In the Mood for Love, every film which wasn’t Project Gutenberg released in 2019… the Hong Kong Film Award’s biggest snubs
Wong Kar-wai’s period classic In the Mood for Love lost out to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning wuxia epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Johnnie To was passed over for Ann Hui – twice – and no nominated film was less deserving than Felix Chong’s star-driven counterfeiting caper Project Gutenberg
The list of nominees for the the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards (HKFA) presentation ceremony – which took place virtually on Wednesday, May 6 – was one of the strongest in recent years. Stephen Chow’s The New King of Comedy, Ray Yeung’s gay romance Suk Suk, the Aaron Kwok-led I’m Livin’ It and Derek Tsang’s coming-of-age movie Better Days were some of the high profile movies in the mix for major awards.
Thankfully, in 2020 the Hong Kong Film Awards Association seem to have selected the most worthy films, but that has not been the case every year. There have also been some head-scratching omissions or baffling winners. Here are seven of the most shocking Hong Kong Film Award snubs over the years.
1985: Long Arm of the Law (best film)
Director Johnny Mak’s crime flick is now regarded as a Hong Kong classic, the film which kick-started the “heroic bloodshed” era and paved the way for John Woo’s genre-defining A Better Tomorrow. The film’s shoot-out in the now demolished Kowloon Walled City is a classic cinema moment. Yet while the film won two awards, it lost to Homecoming in the best film category. Although Homecoming was one of the first productions after the handover agreement was signed in 1984 to make points about most Hongkongers’ roots in mainland China, its cinematic importance is dwarfed by the legacy of Long Arm of the Law.
1988: A Better Tomorrow II (best action choreography)
Although the original set the template for Hong Kong action movies of the 80s, A Better Tomorrow II kicked things into a higher gear. The climatic action sequence in an old mansion, where Chow Yun-fat, Ti Lung and Dean Shek go to take down the gangsters running a counterfeiting operation, remains one of the best in Hong Kong movie history, with a body count of nearly 100. The scene where Chow and his rival swap guns in a sign of respect is equally iconic. Sadly, it lost to Project A Part II for best action choreography. Not a poor film itself, Project A Part II is overshadowed both by A Better Tomorrow II and its own predecessor, which featured Jackie Chan’s legendary clock tower fall.
1995: Christopher Doyle (best cinematography)