Twitch-O-Meter: Tony Leung is ready for his extreme close-up, Mr. deMille!

Posted by Ard Vijn at 6:39pm.

Posted in Twitch-O-Meter .

Tony Leung has not been in the news a lot lately, in fact the one thing that keeps popping up is his role in “Red Cliff”. Always the gentleman, he helped director John Woo out of a prickly situation when star Chow Yun Fat suddenly left. And now some people say he doesn’t really shine in this role. Hm...pity, if that’s true.

When I saw Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” at the 2005 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the impressions I got was that Tony Leung must be one of the smoothest actors in the world. And a handsome devil too…
His rogue-with-a-lost-soul just oozed charm, and his performance worked on so many levels (not to mention layers) that I was instantly won over.

Discussing this with friends afterwards I said that I couldn’t recall having seen him before, and of course I was immediately pummeled by them with titles of movies which I had indeed seen. Classics even, like…

...well, lets not mention too many titles, shall we?

Anyway, the reason why I hadn’t recognized him was that the role he played in “2046” was so very different to what I had seen him do before. Yet in every role, he seems to actually BE what he’s playing, either fading in the background or supporting the other actors.

(I’d make a joke about how he was almost unrecognizable in Johnny To’s “Election” but that might just confuse the hell out of too many people. For those not in the know, there are several Tony Leungs in the Chinese entertainment industry and the one in “Election” is someone else entirely, whose name is Tony Leung Ka-Fai. The one that features in this quiz is Tony Leung Chiu-Wai.)

So here is some much needed love towards Tony Leung: a quiz!
Which means that once again, I’m going to use a turn in the Twitch-O-Meter to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of one of my favorite thespians.
Guess which 5 movies they’re from. The “Red Cliff” pic on the top-left doesn’t count.

No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.

And I’ll post the answers Friday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).
Good luck!

Check the gallery and test your Tony Leung knowledge, they’re not all of them difficult!

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Reader Comments

plastique 07/28/2008 @ 9:45pm

1. Lust, Caution
2. Hard Boiled
3. Hero
4. In the Mood for Love
5. 2046
cpa314 07/28/2008 @ 11:37pm

1 lust caution
2 either hard boiled or bullet in the head
3. hero
4 in the mood for love
5 2046 because of his mustache. didnt have that In The Mood For Love
M@rc 07/29/2008 @ 3:37am

Well that was fun, every picture quessed correctly in the first reply
Ard Vijn 07/29/2008 @ 3:51am

Yes, I should make these a LOT harder it seems!

Well done, plastique!
Right in one go.

Any idea which actor/actress should be done next?
Rhythm-X 07/29/2008 @ 9:09am

“Tony Leung has not been in the news a lot lately”

Getting married in a ceremony directed by Wong Kar-Wai doesn’t count?
Ard Vijn 07/29/2008 @ 3:51pm

Ehm… I didn’t count it because I meant movie news.
And ehm… I didn’t know about it: it’s just a marriage, not like he hit her or lost nude pictures of her.

But granted, even under that definition this news item is indeed sort-of half-movie news, with its Wong Kar-Wai involvement and all. Pretty cool news actually…

It’s just that we seem to be constantly tracking specific actors and all their projects, yet Tony Leung just seems to be there and happens to sometimes star in a movie.
plastique 07/29/2008 @ 4:18pm

Maybe do people who have been primarily in supporting roles such as-

-YosiYosi Arakawa(Vinnie Jones translator in Survive Style +5)
-Yoshiyuki Morishita(gutted at bar by Go Go in Kill Bill)
-Susumu Terajima(tortured by Asano in Ichi the Killer, older guitar brother in Funky Forest)
-Michael Wincott(villian in the Crow, gay art dealer in Basquiat)
-William Forsythe(cop or soldier in movies like the Rock)
-David Morse(cop or soldier in movies like the Rock)
-William Fichtner(cop or soldier in movies like the Rock)
-Danny Trejo(killer Mexican guy in many, many movies)
-David Patrick Kelly(dropped off cliff by Ah-nold in Commando)
-Mia Kirshner(hot schoolgirl stripper in Exotica, hot love interest in the crappy Crow 2)
-Luis Guzman(in probably every PT Anderson movie)
-Ken Leung(fake accent guy in Keeping the Faith, psycho in the Sapranos)
-Bolo F***ing Yeung(wanted to break Van Damme like he broke his friend in Bloodsport)

Maybe these actors starred one or two movies in their time, but they are usually supporting characters who get killed in spectacular ways. My friends and I usually see them in a film and go, ‘Hey, that guy/gal’ and have no idea what their name is until we look them up, and find out we’ve seen like five of their movies.

They’re sometimes wildly different from role to role, so if you wanted to you could make it super hard. For some actors like these, if you wanted to get sadistic, you could make it damn near impossible, though that would be a bit much, but I would think its funny.
cpa314 07/29/2008 @ 7:18pm

Oh Yes. It’s gotta be Bolo F#cking Yeung!!