Coolie Killer

Hong Kong's sense of professional pride reaches a warped height in Coolie Killer, claiming that our killers are so good at their jobs they have become an international brand name! The film is at once global and local – while its story features international assassins whose personas are taken after Hollywood gangster classics of the 1930s and Jean Pierre Melville's French masterpiece Le Samoura (1967); yet the film's conclusion is set specifically in Hong Kong's Western District, to the point of Sai Ying Pun being named in the Chinese title. The title character, who rises from the rank of unskilled labourer to world-renowned murderer and is played in full Alain Delon homage by matinee idol Charlie Chin, is a prototype of the cool killers made famous a few years later by John W oo's hero films.

Screening courtesy of Mei Ah Entertainment Group Ltd