06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Early Donnie Yen movies before Ip Man revisited, from Drunken Tai Chi to Cheetah on Fire
Today, Donnie Yen Ji-dan is unquestionably one of the most famous Hong Kong film actors in the world.
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Yen's superlative martial arts skills should have turned him into a star when he made his film debut in 1984, but it somehow took him almost 25 years to reap the acclaim he deserved, coming with
the Ip Man films in the 2000s.
'In the 1990s, Yen seemed fated to play bad guys in big films and good guys in small films,' critic Grady Hendrix said in 2012. 'Producers just wouldn't take the risk on him as a leading man.'
Just this week, we were greeted with news that he is set to direct and star in a stand-alone spin-off feature based on his character Caine from the Hollywood action franchise John Wick.
Below we re-evaluate some of the films Yen made at the start of his career.
1. Drunken Tai Chi (1984)
