Tsui Hark

Restless invention at commercial scale. Tsui reinvented the wuxia film more than once, cutting faster than the eye can follow and treating Chinese history as raw material for spectacle. Prolific to a fault; the catalogue holds 41 films of markedly varying ambition.

Signature

• Wire work and undercranking pushed past physical plausibility.
• Editing rhythm as the primary special effect.
• National myth (Wong Fei-hung, Zu, the Republic) restaged as pop.
• Tone shifting scene to scene — slapstick into tragedy without warning.