11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How Teddy Chen gave Hong Kong films Mission: Impossible treatment and eyed global success
The Tom Cruise action movie Mission: Impossible was such a global success in the late 1990s that some Hong Kong producers decided to strip the local characteristics out of their action films to make them more palatable to mainstream audiences in the West.
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Cue generic plots involving the CIA, international criminals, drug smugglers and terrorists, and of course, really loud action scenes featuring massive explosions.
The results did not make a dent in the box office in the West, and the idea of internationalisation soon faded away.
These three films, all directed by
Teddy Chen Tak-sum , are the best examples of this mini-genre.
1. Downtown Torpedoes (1997)
In 1997 Mission: Impossible was the most talked about film on international screens, and Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest did not bother to disguise the fact that Downtown Torpedoes was heavily influenced by it.
