1987:
A Chinese Ghost Story (uncredited director, producer)
A young female ghost (Joey Wong) is forced to seduce men and to bring them to a demon for
lunch. A tax collector (Leslie Cheung) falls for the ghost and helps her to give up these
evil activities and to reincarnate.
Tsui Hark chose the story, wrote the script, created the style of the movie, cast the
actors and shot scenes. 
What was left to official director Ching Siu Tung? Ching's style
is present in the fight sequences, but he had never made any other movies with such
romantic atmosphere. As this type of atmosphere is also present in other Tsui Hark
features (i.e. The Lovers), we can therefore conclude that A Chinese Ghost Story is
more a Tsui Hark movie than a Ching's one. Why Hark let Ching be credited as director? The
association Tsui Hark and Ching Siu Tung proved however to be very efficient and this
dream team provided the best modern Cantonese movies.
1987: A Better Tomorrow 2
(producer)
Ho (Ti Lung) wants to help his brother (Leslie Cheung) who has gone undercover.
Tsui forced John Woo to make this sequel. The Film Workshop entered then in the era of
commercial exploitation by producing sequels to big box office successes. But as usual
sequels don't keep the originality and the tone of the initial project and can be
sometimes too much. A Better Tomorrow 2 isn't disappointing in this respect. The
final fight sequence shows Ti Lung, Chow Yun Fat, Dean Shek and Kenneth Tsang slaughtering
on their own hundreds of gangsters! Walls are painted in red…
1987: The Final Victory
(actor)
This is
a black comedy directed by new wave director Patrick Tam and written by Wong Kar Wai. It
deals with the gangster world, its rules and loyalty.
Tsui Hark won the Best Supporting Actor award for his role as a moody big brother. It's
indeed one of Hark's best work as an actor since he is serious and he doesn't ham it up
for a change!
1988: Diary Of A Big Man
(uncredited director, producer)
Chow
(Chow Yun-fat) falls in love with two women (Sally Yeh and Joey Wang). As he can't say no,
he gets married with both. A hard life begins and he's got to watch his back and to ask
help from his best mate in order to avoid his two wives to meet.
Joey Wang explains in a French magazine that Tsui Hark made the film on video and asked
director Chow Yuen to remake it in 35mm. The result is a very funny comedy where Chow
Yun-fat knows how to be as ridiculous as he is cool in John Woo's movies. But the
relationships between men and women are not revolutionised here. It's just a nice
entertaining story with good actors, which is already a lot.
1988: Gunmen
(uncredited director, producer)
After the civil war in the 30's, a war veteran becomes a policeman in Shanghai. To fight
against an opium baron, he hires his war buddies...
The relationships between Tsui Hark and director Kirk Wong weren't the best on the set and
it had some effects on the overall homogeneity of the project. The result is however
interesting and it is still considered as a great tribute to De Palma's The
Untouchables.
1988: Laserman
(producer)
1988: The Big Heat
(uncredited director, producer)
A cop (Waise Lee) is losing the control of his
right hand and cannot pull the trigger on time anymore. Before any accident happens, he
decides to resign. Meanwhile his friends and informer is brutally murdered in Malaysia.
Before leaving he decides to find the killers with the help of his buddy, a young cop and
an inspector from Kuala Lumpur.
Tsui Hark wanted to do something else with the 'Hero Movie' trend and made this noir and
nihilistic thriller full of gory effects and irony. He showed how violent, dark and
cynical was HK before the Handover. In the process, lots of directors were hired and fired
due to production problems. Genius editor David Wu managed however to deliver a consistent
movie, even if The Big Heat suffered from these constant changes during production.
Note as well the apparition of Joey Wong as a convincing nurse who falls for the young
cop.
1988: I Love Maria,
aka Roboforce (actor, producer)
A terrorist group uses robots to conquer the world. Mad scientist (John Sam) and former
terrorist Whisky (Tsui Hark) try to control robot Maria built on the model of Whisky
childhood friend (and chief of the terrorists) appearance.
The original idea, a tribute to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and the theme of the
doubles (man/machine) were very promising. But this first go into the SF movie world
wasn't as good as it could have been. A slow-paced action and a not very tight plot
suggest that there were a lot of production difficulties. An old-fashioned music score and
very rough special effects didn't help either. But this witty movie was a kind of
embodiment of another conception of moviemaking.
1989: The Killer
(producer)
Professional
killer Jeff (Chow Yun Fat) hurts accidentally innocent singer Jenny (Sally Yeh) on a
mission. He'll accept an ultimate contract in order to pay Jenny an operation to get her
sight back.
Tsui Hark refused to produce the movie due to obscure arguments with director John Woo.
Super star Chow Yun Fat managed however to make it happen. Hark hasn't let it go so easily
and he imposed Woo some constraints. He cast Sally Yeh, he refused to use any jazzy music
score (as wished originally by Woo) and he wrote the dialogue scene between Jeff and his
friend Sidney. Apart from that, John Woo made one of his greatest movies ever. Chow Yun
Fat amazing acting and tragic elements of the story made this movie a masterpiece. It was
obviously an impressive box office success in HK. The Killer made the
gangster-movie genre a typical local genre in HK.
1989: Just Heroes
(producer)
A gang boss is murdered. A war starts from there between the gang members to find out who
will be the new boss.
The movie was first made to help financially Kung Fu movie master Chang Cheh (The One
Armed Swordsman). The cast is impressive since David Chiang, Ti Lung (two of the
favourite actors of Chang Cheh), Danny Lee, Wu Ma, Stephen Chow and James Wong are
present. John Woo was in charge of directing the project but made somehow a confusing and
slow-paced clone of A Better Tomorrow. When Chang Cheh received the money, he
decided to use it to create a school for young directors. The patriarch wasn't dead and
buried yet and it was his way to refuse politely this retirement pension.
1989: Web Of Deception,
aka Deception (producer)
Businesswoman
Brigitte Lin is blackmailed in this thriller à la Hitchcock. It's very rare in Hong-Kong
to have such thriller with very little action. In Web Of Deception, there is a
great deal of suspense but the direction is unfortunately far too common. Characters are
not very deep either. A fantastic cast (Brigitte Lin, Pauline Wong, and two Joey Wong for
the price of one) doesn't make you forget the movie defaults but still keeps you in
suspense until the end.
Tsui Hark was back
to film direction after three years, and he decided to shoot his way a prequel to John Woo
cult movies. The atmosphere is really different from the two other films. Tsui Hark
develops indeed a strong female character and adds political content to the world created
by Woo. It's not an action movie anymore but a romantic and historical adventure film full
of nostalgia.