Director in Action – Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film

Stephen Teo is currently a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and a senior associate of RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His latest work is King Hu's A Touch of Zen (Hong Kong University Press, 2007).

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. From The Big Heat to Lifeline; 3. Nucleus of the Milky Way; 4. Directed by Johnnie To; 5. The Uneven Auteur; 6. Postscript.

With his customary range and depth, Stephen Teo gives us a remarkable study of the action films of Johnnie To. To is one of the finest filmmakers working in the world today, and Teo situates his distinctive achievement within the wider context of Hong Kong politics, culture, and film production. In-depth analyses of To's films gain resonance from Teo's survey of the wider history of Hong Kong and its genre cinema. This, the first book-length study in English of To's work, is very likely to remain the best. It confirms Stephen Teo's stature as one of the foremost historians and critics of Chinese-language filmmaking. -- David Bordwell, Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison