Maggie Cheung’s best martial arts movie roles, from Hero with Jet Li and Tony Leung Chiu-wai to Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time

The In the Mood for Love actress appeared in several martial arts and action films in the 1990s, including Green Snake, her most overtly sensual role
She brings emotional weight to her role in Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time, and excels in combat scenes with Jet Li in Zhang Yimou’s period drama Hero

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Richard James Havis

Published: 7:15am, 26 Dec 2021

Why you can trust SCMP

Before the international success of In the Mood for Love, foreign journalists referred to Maggie Cheung Man-yuk as an “action heroine”. That used to confuse people in Hong Kong, as the popular actress was more known at home for her comedies, light dramas and art-house films.

The description probably arose because Cheung had appeared in Jackie Chan films such as Police Story, in which she had a non-action role as his girlfriend. Cheung has said that, although she enjoyed making Chan’s films, they were not the kind of roles she was looking for.

“Jackie always gave you a lot of things to do,” she told television programme Cinema AZN in 2007, “but they weren’t things that I really wanted to do.”

Although Cheung has often said that she has no interest in the genre, she did appear in several martial arts/action films during the boom years of the early 1990s. The genre had become highly lucrative again, and performers were unable to resist the big salaries that were on offer.

She co-starred in Tsui Hark’s New Dragon Gate Inn, one of the best “wire-fu” films (that used wires and pulleys to augment actors’ martial arts skills), and even made a couple of films with lowbrow director/producer Wong Jing. Cheung also played a prototype superheroine in Johnnie To Kei-fung’s The Heroic Trio.

She reportedly turned down a role in an X-Men film later, telling the Post: “It would be boring to make … I can’t see how that would be a challenge for me.”

Why African-Americans latched on to films like Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury

Below, we recall some of the highlights of reluctant fighter Cheung’s martial arts career.

Green Snake

This unusual 1993 martial arts fantasy by Tsui Hark, loosely based on a novel by Lillian Lee, features Cheung as a snake spirit who has taken on human form – not yet skilled in human walking, she sometimes slithers around the floor on her stomach.

Cheung plays Green Snake opposite Taiwan’s popular Joey Wong Cho-yin – a favourite actress of Tsui – who plays her compatriot White Snake. The story, based on a Chinese legend, is about two mythological creatures who seduce men while being pursued by a Buddhist monk (Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo). It’s a strange mixture of Indian mysticism, psychedelia, Buddhism and Chinese mythology.

“While the creatures may be off the mark, the humans are first rate,” wrote Post film critic Paul Fonoroff on the film’s release, noting its poor special effects. “Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong are properly vampish … the sight of the elegantly gowned Green Snake, sticking out her tongue to munch on a tempting fly or two lightens up the proceedings considerably.”

Cheung portrays Green Snake as a flirty and provocative character, and it’s her most overtly sensual role.

Moon Warriors

Whereas many films from the early 1990s were made with “flying paper” – which means that the director would make up the script on the set, scribble lines on a piece of paper, then throw them at the actors just before the cameras rolled – this underrated period martial arts drama benefits from a good script written by Alex Law Kai-yui.

Interestingly, although direction is credited to Sammo Hung Kam-bo, Hung has said that Law, renowned martial artist Lam Ching-ying, and Law’s partner Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting all directed bits of the film, and he only polished it up during editing.

Maggie Cheung plays Mo Xian Er, the bodyguard to a prince (Kenny Bee) who’s fleeing from his brother who has usurped the throne. It’s a kind of romantic quartet, with rustic fisherman Andy Lau Tak-wah falling for Anita Mui Yim-fong’s snooty princess; she’s betrothed to the prince whom Cheung’s character loves.

Cheung takes her role seriously and brings it gravitas by exhibiting some atypical emotional brutality. She also fares well in Ching Siu-tung and Corey Yuen Kwai’s highly acrobatic martial arts scenes, aided by wires and stunt doubles – even action queen Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia couldn’t have done it any better.

What became of 90s Hong Kong film icon Maggie Cheung?

But the star of the show was Hoi Wai, the performing whale at Hong Kong’s Ocean Park marine theme park, making its movie debut. Hoi Wai even got to kiss Andy Lau.

Ashes of Time

Cheung only has a small role – she’s credited with a “guest appearance” – in Wong Kar-wai’s wistful paean to the martial arts genre, but it’s an important one. Cheung plays the former lover of the main protagonist, Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing), the woman he loved but abandoned to take up life as a swordsman.

Maggie Cheung’s character needs to be attractive enough to make viewers believe that the swordsman would remain fully in love with her for many years – he has developed strong feelings of melancholia because of her memory – even though he had no contact with her.

Wong holds frequent close-ups on Cheung’s face, made up to look pale and wan, to accentuate her beauty.

Cheung plays it moody, and she gives her character the emotional weight of Ruan Lingyu, the tragic real-life actress that she portrayed in Centre Stage. She also has one of the key lines of Wong’s philosophical movie: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could go back to the past.”

Cheung told the Post’s Winnie Chung: “I trust Kar-wai, I trust him as a person and a director. I trust his taste in characters, and what he demands from those characters. In his films, he gives you depth.”

Hero

Cheung’s most effective foray into martial arts was in Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s Hero, in which she plays the powerful swordswoman Flying Snow. Cheung’s character is the moral core of the film, being the only character who dares to criticise tyranny, autocracy and dictatorship.

“I wanted to have one serious costume drama on my list,” she told the Post’s Chung. “I’ve done them before, but they were all about flying on screen, they didn’t offer much in terms of character. I wanted to have a real story, a real character.”

Cheung excels in combat scenes choreographed by Ching Siu-tung, which make liberal use of special effects as well as wires. Among the highlights are a sequence in which she deflects a torrent of arrows with Jet Li Lianjie, and a one-to-one fight with Li, surrounded by her enemies.

Cheung brings a slow-burning passion to her romance with her lover Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), and acts with a smouldering intensity throughout.

In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here.

Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook