Corey Yuen remembered through the Hong Kong action filmmaker’s 5 best movies

Yuen directed Jason Statham, Jet Li, Jean Claude Van Damme and Michelle Yeoh in a six-decade career that spanned Hong Kong and Hollywood

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Corey Yuen Kwai at an interview with the Post in 2009. The actor, director and action choreographer, whose death in 2022 from Covid-19 had been kept a secret, helped launch the film careers of Michelle Yeoh and Jean Claude Van Damme among others. Photo: Edward Wong

Published: 2:06pm, 13 Aug 2024Updated: 3:02pm, 13 Aug 2024

Hong Kong cinema fans have been thrown into mourning by news of the death of legendary film director and action choreographer Corey Yuen Kwai.

He died from Covid-19 in 2022 but until now, Yuen’s family had chosen to keep this a secret. His death was inadvertently leaked by fellow action star Jackie Chan in a social media post this week.

Commenting on the 65th anniversary of the Seven Little Fortunes, the Peking opera school troupe that launched the careers of Yuen and Chan, as well as those of Sammo Hung Kam-bo, Yuen Wah and Yuen Biao, among others, Chan made Yuen’s death public, writing: “It is with profound sadness we bid farewell to Corey Yuen, whose legacy in action cinema is unparalleled.”

Yuen began acting in the early 1970s, with small roles in films such as Fist of Fury and The 14 Amazons, and continued to appear on screen throughout his career, both in the films he directed and those directed by close friends and colleagues.

Jet Li (left) and Corey Yuen at a press conference for Lethal Weapon 4 in 1998. Photo: Oliver Tsang

Once he started directing, Yuen enjoyed frequent sojourns working in Hollywood, either as an action choreographer on such prestigious projects as X-Men and The Expendables, or as director, starting with 1986’s No Retreat, No Surrender, the film in which a young Jean Claude Van Damme first drew international attention.