While the end result may be admittedly more uneven in spots than his best-known works, this lavish period piece contains enough thrills, spills and moments of cinematic grace that not only manage to push it through the rough spots but allow it to put most American action films of recent vintage to shame. In recent years, he has slowed down his output a bit-he now averages maybe one movie a year when he used to crank out two or three-but as his latest work, "The Taking of Tiger Mountain," demonstrates, he has not lost any of his filmmaking fever.
So distinctive was his work that during the brief period of time when he departed Hong Kong for America to direct a couple of Jean-Claude Van Damme epics (a ritual that many of the major HK players took part in at the time), the resulting films, " Double Team" and "Knock Off" were actually kind of entertaining in a cheerfully insane way. FIlled with breathtaking stunts, exquisitely choreographed, action set-pieces and weirdo humor, the films that he was involved in stood out amidst the flood of titles that emerged during that time. As a producer, director and/or writer (and usually in some combination of the three), he was involved with many of the key cinematic works of this period-"Peking Opera Blues," the "A Better Tomorrow" trilogy, "The Killer," "Dragon Inn," "A Chinese Ghost Story" and the jaw-dropping "Time and Tide" to name just a few.
Throughout the '80s and '90s, when the action cinema of Hong Kong was at its artistic and commercial peak throughout the world, arguably the key figure in their film industry was the hugely prolific Tsui Hark.
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