Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.
Following last edition’s trip to Latvia, we are heading to Hong Kong with Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, a martial arts hit that is making waves at the global box office. Bolstered by an all-star cast, the film follows an illegal migrant, who is also a skilled fighter, as he finds a way to survive in the triad-ridden Kowloon Walled City, invoking Hong Kong’s martial arts movies of the past. Although concrete walls tower onscreen, the film’s success has scaled all blockades, raking in over $111M globally.
Name: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
Country: Hong Kong, China
Producer: Media Asia Film
Distributor: Well Go USA (U.S.)
For fans of: Martial arts films, Hong Kong cinema
Selected as Hong Kong’s entry for the Best International Feature Film race for the Oscars, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In has been invoking Hong Kong martial arts cinema’s glorious past while also putting a fresh spin on the beloved genre.
Based on the novel ‘City of Darkness’ by Yuyi and comic of the same name by Andy Seto, the film has made over $111M globally since it first premiered locally in early May and screened as part of the Midnights section in Cannes. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In raked in the highest-ever ticket sales for a local film in Hong Kong and the second-highest ever when including foreign films, and now looks set for international success. A future prequel and sequel to the film were announced in May this year.
Directed by veteran action director Soi Cheang, the film stars Louis Koo, Sammo Hung, Richie Jen, Raymond Lam, Terrance Lau, Kenny Wong, Philip Ng and Tony Wu. Set in the 1980s, the film follows Chan Lok-kwun (played by Lam), a Chinese-Vietnamese illegal migrant attempting to pay his way to a fake ID. After having to flee triad boss Mr. Big (played by Hung), Chan takes refuge in Kowloon City.
The widespread success of Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In marks a critical inflection point for Hong Kong’s martial arts cinema — invoking reflection on its golden bygone age, yet also ushering hope that a new wave might be just around the corner.
Compared to the golden decades of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, Hong Kong action cinema has suffered a relative downturn. No martial arts film has registered among the highest-grossing films at the domestic box office in the last 15 years before Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, besides the Ip Man franchise, which was was helmed by Twilight of the Warriors producer Wilson Yip. Another heavyweight producer, John Chong (Infernal Affairs, Initial D), helped add gravitas to the project.
However, the film’s global box office success surprised director Cheang, who was cautious about having any high aspirations. “While I was making the movie, I kept asking people if there even was an audience for a nostalgic action film,” Cheang tells Deadline. “Would people even watch this? It wasn’t until I started to get responses from people who had seen the film when the film opened, where the audiences were so enthusiastic about it, that I thought the film would be successful. I never expected this film to do well because in the past, people never really watched some of my movies, so when I was making Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, I was extremely relaxed and very happy.”
Walled In‘s all-star cast
Hong Kong-born American actor Philip Ng plays the role of King, who is triad boss Mr. Big’s right-hand man. Trained in martial arts since his teenage years, Ng first started out as an assistant action choreographer and stuntman, before landing acting roles in films like Once Upon a Time in Shanghai and Birth of the Dragon.
“It was very rare to be directed like this, in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In,” says Ng, “For example, Soi would just come up to me and say, ‘King is going to be in this or that situation today. What kind of reactions is he going to give?’ And then we just played, but it was very serious play.
“It’s the easiest to create in this kind of environment, because I wasn’t afraid to try anything. I had confidence in the director — I knew he would know when to hold me back a bit or when I should give more impact. As an actor, because we don’t film in sequence, we really have to trust the director on this.”
Cheang says that he had no particular actors in mind when he first wrote the script, only knowing that he wanted to introduce fresh faces in the martial arts scene in the film, next to the genre’s familiar stars. During the casting process, Cheang met Ng three times to discuss and develop his eventual character. It helped that Ng is a big fan of Cheang’s 2006 film, Dog Bite Dog.
“I love that movie, but I never got a chance to meet or talk to Soi,” he says. “But for this film, people started to contact me, about Soi wanting to meet me. I got there and we talked. I was pretty polite the first time, and then he got me to come out of my shell a little bit. He wanted to understand my personality and see if it fits the character. By the third time we met, he offered me the role. I was flabbergasted.”
After Ng’s role was confirmed, he recalls being excited when he gradually found out the rest of the film’s ensemble. “This is the fifth time I’ve worked with Sammo Hung, but I’m still a fanboy. Every time I see him, I’m like, ‘Oh my, it’s Sammo Hung,’ even though I’ve known him for 20 years.
“The first thing that Soi told me about the role of King was that since I’ve been in the business for a while, the audience knows who I am, but he wanted to make sure that once I put the costume on, people wouldn’t be able to recognize me easily.” As such he wore a goatee and a wig with long hair as part of his role.
Ng says that while choreography was rehearsed ahead of production, Cheang did not have detailed plans for his shots. “Soi doesn’t plan his shots ahead of time. There’s no shot list,” he adds. “He knows the sequence well, but in terms of where to put the camera, the angles, he goes on set and he feels it. He feels a certain place or location is good for a certain action and then he figures it out.”
“For me, a lot of my choreography was done just a little bit before I had to shoot, because they were focused on choreographing for Raymond and Terrance as they didn’t have as much martial arts experience and needed more time to learn.”
Ng has retained close bond with many of the film’s younger cast following the shoot. “It was very memorable working with the younger guys, because I had to fight them,” he says. “Especially the ending scene, which was shot over 20 days. Each day was no less than around 16 hours, so it was a pretty arduous experience, and we all wanted to do good. That friendship is pretty close till now. We’re all still hanging out.”
Recreating the Kowloon Walled City
Constructing the densely-populated and sometimes-anarchic layout of Kowloon Walled City in British Hong Kong for the big screen formed a critical part of Cheang’s project. The demolition of the actual Walled City was ordered in the late 1980s and completed by 1994. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In required computer-generated imagery for several shots, especially the wide shots of the city.
“Is this as realistic as the real Walled City? Probably not, but it’s as close as possible,” says Cheang. “It sufficiently correlates to the real city and it achieves what we wanted in terms of the story and mood for the film. I’ve worked with CGI-heavy movies before and I’m familiar with the technology, but I wanted to keep a certain kind of realism to the city. It’s a balance as there’s always some artistic license, just because you’re making a movie.”
Recreating the dizzying, labyrinthian layout of Walled City for film, the set designers also added several removable walls and nooks for cameras to be fitted in and for the martial arts choreographers to have sufficient room to work in.
The universal language of martial arts
After opening in mainland China and Hong Kong, as well as its bow in Cannes in May, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In has globe-trotted to box offices across Southeast Asia, Taiwan, France, Germany and India, with limited releases in the U.S. and Canada over the last seven months. The film will also screen at the Palm Springs International Film Festival from January 4 and open theatrically in Japan on January 17.
Ng says that martial arts cinema is a kind of universal language.
“I’ve been traveling a lot to different places and meeting different audiences. Everyone’s response has been similar,” he says. “That’s why, in the ’80s and ’90s, Hong Kong movies exported to so many different countries — it’s a physical language. You can just see what’s happening on the screen, with the physical language that the actors use.
“I remember when I was in New York in a scene where Cyclone punches Lok-kwun, and he spins and catches a cigarette, everyone in that audience started clapping. With those images, you don’t have to understand the language, you just have to understand what’s going on onscreen.”
English (US) ·