When I became obsessed with Chow Yun-Fat in the latter half of the 1990’s, I would constantly search for his movies at the Suncoast Video Store in the Park Plaza Mall whenever we’d go to Little Rock. Unfortunately, I’d run into cheap looking DVDs with titles like “God of Killers,” but I’d buy them anyway. That’s the title under which I first attempted to watch THE STORY OF WOO VIET, starring a young Chow-Yun-Fat and directed by Hong Kong legend Ann Hui. Whoever distributed the film was making a blatant cash grab on Chow Yun-Fat’s worldwide popularity at the time, and the DVD was terrible. I turned it off after a little while because the print was so dark you could barely see it, and the subtitles were illegible, constantly falling off the screen. I had not attempted to watch the film again until very recently. My friends on “Podcast on Fire” devoted an episode to THE STORY OF WOO VIET, which piqued my interest again. Lo and behold, I found a fine print with English subtitles streaming on Tubi!

As the story starts, we meet Woo Viet (Chow Yun-Fat) on a boat full of starving refugees. We learn that he’s a former Vietnamese soldier escaping to Hong Kong in hopes of making his way to the United States. It’s a tough start as we see a baby die of malnourishment and an old man murdered by Vietnamese special agents, which leads to Woo Viet fighting off and killing those same agents, all within the first 15 minutes. On the run for murder, he’s lucky that his Hong Kong pen pal, social worker Lap-Quan (Cora Miao), can help him get fake papers for his escape to the United States. As he’s getting ready to leave, he meets the beautiful Shum Ching (Cherie Chung), who’s also using fake documents to get to the U.S. Unfortunately, the Hong Kong trafficker who’s supposed to be helping them, has sold Shum Ching to a powerful gangster in the Philippines with plans to turn her into a prostitute. When she’s taken away from the Manila airport, Woo Viet goes after her. Unable to kick enough ass to save her, he ends up working as a hired gun for her kidnapper in hopes of buying her freedom. Throw in Shaw Brothers legend Lo Lieh as Sarm, Woo Viet’s partner in crime in Manila, and the stage is set for an escape to a better tomorrow or loneliness and a quick death.

After viewing the film, it’s probably best that I couldn’t watch THE STORY OF WOO VIET back in the late 1990’s. At that time, I wanted Chow Yun-Fat as the honorable gangster of films like A BETTER TOMORROW and THE KILLER, or the badass cop of HARD-BOILED. I could not have appreciated director Ann Hui’s work here, the second film in her “Viet Nam trilogy.” Gritty and downbeat, it’s about as far away from John Woo’s stylish films as you can get. When the violence comes, it lands with a painful thud as nails enter heads, knives slash bodies, and even toothbrushes are shoved through cheeks. This is Ann Hui working within a genre film plotline while infusing it with something akin to bleak realism. She would go on to develop her legendary career with the next year’s BOAT PEOPLE, and she would use Chow a couple of more times in films like LOVE IN A FALLEN CITY and THE POSTMODERN LIFE OF MY AUNT. This is not peak Ann Hui, but she still brings something interesting to this early effort.

As far as the performances go, Chow may have been 5 years away from the superstardom of A BETTER TOMORROW, but he already had what it took to be a film lead. Even in a film like this, without his heroic bloodshed honor, he has a way of making it look easy. Cherie Chung is appealing as Shum Ching, and she was soon on her way to film stardom in Hong Kong hits like PEKING OPERA BLUES, AN AUTUMN’S TALE (with Chow), and John Woo’s ONCE A THIEF (also with Chow). Like many Hong Kong actresses before her, after a string of successful films she would get married and retire in 1991. I like Cora Miao early in the film as the kind social worker, but she fades as the film progresses. Miao would work with Chow and Ann Hui frequently throughout the 80’s. Like Chung, she retired in 1991 and married director Wayne Wang (THE JOY LUCK CLUB). Finally, I wanted to give a shoutout to Lo Lieh as Woo Viet’s one friend, Sarm. While he may be known best for his classic work with Shaw Brothers in films like the FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH and THE 36^TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, he gives a solid character performance here and would go on to work in Hong Kong for another two decades.

THE STORY OF WOO VIET is not at the top of the list of films that Hong Kong legends Chow Yun-Fat and Ann Hui would work on, but it’s still an important watch to see their obvious talent at this point in their careers. I’m glad I finally watched the film in 2026. After all the life I’ve lived since those days digging through the DVDs at the Park Plaza Mall, there’s no way it could have hit me the same way then that it does now.