How Hollywood beat Hong Kong’s stuntmen to a pulp

An action-packed new film celebrates the bone-breaking, bicep-tearing heroes of cinema. Why are they a dying breed?

Albert Leung – a Hong Kong filmmaker and former stuntman – has jumped from a moving van and been dragged along behind it by a chain. He smashed through a fake wall into a pitch-black staircase – where he couldn’t see his landing spot – and jumped from the fifth floor of a building. “With wires,” he clarifies. 
Albert now has a list of ailments and creaky joints from his near-decade in the stunt game. Indeed, being a Hong Kong stuntman takes its toll. “My lower back…” he begins, before quickly moving on to another body part. “I can’t squat because the meniscus in my knee is worn out. And my right shoulder… the bicep was totally torn from wear and tear. The doctor fixed it – they stapled it to the bone. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t do anymore because of the flexibility.” 
Albert and his twin brother Herbert, also a former stuntman, drew on their experiences for the action-drama, Stuntman, in UK cinemas now. Co-directed by the Leung brothers, it stars Hong Kong action legend Stephen Tung as washed-up stunt choreographer Sam Lee, who – while trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter – makes a comeback with a brand-new action flick. Sam is haunted by an on-set accident during the Eighties – a botched bridge jump that left one of his stuntmen paralyzed – but still clashes with younger stuntmen over his tyrant-like management of action sequences and his prioritizing the quality of action sequences above all else. Even the safety of his beaten-down stunt performers. 
The film is an ode to the glory days of Eighties Hong Kong action and the sometimes ramshackle, DIY-approach to stunt work. “In Hong Kong, there is no safety manager!” says Albert. Stuntman packs a surprisingly emotional wallop too. It’s a melancholy look at the almost-lost art of Hong Kong stunt work and its unsung heroes: the stunt performers themselves. 
Stuntman also takes inspiration from various stuntmen Albert and Herbert met over the years, from veterans – what they call “first generation Jackie Chan stunt team” – to younger stuntmen. Many of them are struggling to make a living in the Hong Kong film industry. 
“The market just isn’t there,” says Albert. “A majority of stuntmen have more than one job to stay afloat.” 
In Stuntman, one aspiring stunt performer is told that he’s even lower on the filmmaking ladder than the extras. For the Leungs, that reflects a real downward trend in the respect afforded to stunt performers. “In the Eighties, respect was way up here,” says Herbert, holding his hand high. “Now it’s seen as the same [as an extra].” 
“At least with extras you can potentially see their face,” says Albert, laughing. “When you’re a stunt double nobody knows you exist!” 
The Hong Kong stunt game is much depleted since its influential heyday in the Eighties and early Nineties. The brothers estimate that there are now just 40 stunt performers in Hong Kong – and they skew significantly older than stunt performers from mainland China, Japan, or other countries. There are relatively few Hong Kong youngsters signing up for the stunt business. “It’s sad to see this industry – especially in Hong Kong – fading away,” says Albert. “Right now, there are not enough stuntmen to go round, because there’s not enough work to go round.” 
Pay is also a problem. “A few years ago, there was a Hong Kong stuntman who went to shoot for Netflix in the UK with Tom Hardy,” says Albert. “When he came back, some of them realised, ‘Why do we want to work here in Hong Kong?’ The pay is less and there’s no adjustment. In the UK you have a base pay and additional pay for difficult stunts that you do. You get paid really well at the end of the week. In Hong Kong it’s just a day rate If you’re a normal stuntman – you get 2,200 dollars [approximately £217] – and you get overtime. But it doesn’t matter what stunts you do that day, the pay is the same. There’s no initiative.” 
Albert and Herbert grew up on Eighties Hong Kong action. They cite Jackie Chan’s Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985) as particular influences (Stuntman gives a nod to Police Story with a shopping mall-set fight sequence) as well as Eastern Condors (1987) with the also legendary Sammo Hung.  
The brothers got their start in the film business as regular actors, landing roles alongside Sammo Hung in the 2007 film Twins Mission. They were then forced to drop out of the film industry due to the lack of work.  
“Ten years went by,” says Albert. “Within those 10  years we were trying whatever way we could to get back into the industry. We even tried to be extras.”  
They broke back into the industry after attending a training course with the Hong Kong Stuntman Association. They began writing Stuntman in 2013 and finally got it made as part of a government funding initiative for first-time filmmakers.  
Hong Kong action of the Eighties and Nineties had a significant impact that’s still felt today in mainstream American cinema. An obvious example is how The Matrix (1999) shaped the next 25 years of Hollywood action. The Matrix’s action (“I know kung fu”) was choreographed by Hong Kong filmmaker Yuen Woo-ping, who then worked on smash hits Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill. The Leungs point to the 2022 Oscar-winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, as Hong Kong’s ongoing influence within the American mainstream.  
But it’s come at the cost of Hong Kong’s own action. “Imagine people learn Shaolin kung fu and all the disciples spread worldwide but when you go back to Shaolin there’s nobody to teach martial arts,” says Herbert. “It’s become a lost art in Hong Kong.” 
They point to various reasons for Hong Kong cinema’s decline. At one time, Hong Kong cinema thrived from its distribution to neighbouring countries. That took a major hit from piracy – cinema admissions between 1992 and 1996 almost halved due to piracy, which led to protest marches and cinema blackouts in 1999. Film industries in other Asian countries also matured. South Korean culture, says Albert, now has a big influence in Asia, while there have been big action hits from elsewhere, such as Thai breakout hit, Ong-Bak (2003), and Indonesian adrenaline-pumper, The Raid (2011). Not to mention a flood of major Hollywood films in China. 
The focus of film production gradually shifted to mainland China after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, with filmmakers getting bigger budgets for the more lucrative mainland market. The Hong Kong industry has also been hit by a 2021 censorship law that bans films that might compromise China’s national security. 
There are occasional big-budget Hong Kong films. Albert recently appeared in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, released earlier this year, which cost the equivalent of £30 million. Luxuries on that film included a green screen studio, a month of training, and previsualization aka “previs” (the art of laying out, arranging, and rehearsing action sequences). Most of the time, there’s not enough budget for previs.  
Money restrictions on smaller Hong Kong films have impacted the overall quality stunt work. “Stunts in Hong Kong are getting simpler and simpler, mainly because the films don’t have as much budget,” says Albert. “Even if we design a fight sequence in pre-production that may be quite long, on the day most likely we only have 30 minutes to an hour to shoot it. So, there’s a lot cut down. That also affects the amount of experience that local stuntmen can get.” 
That also goes for safety precautions that, like a stuntman, can go out of the window. 
“Unless you’re doing a large-scale film, where you have more resources, they’re being done DIY style,” says Herbert about action sequences.  
He explains that while Hollywood films will hire specific safety personnel, that’s not the case in Hong Kong. “The stunt crew are their own safety manager,” says Herbert.  
Albert recalls one DIY-style stunt he performed for a TV show, in which he had a spray canister-turned-flaming torch blasted in his face. The only protection was a transparent mask and some K-Y Jelly to smear on his face. “I was like, ‘Aren’t I supposed to have fireproof gel instead of K-Y?’” says Albert, laughing. “They just gave me a tube of K-Y! I thought, ‘This doesn’t feel right!’ That’s the kind of guerilla-style we’re still running in Hong Kong.”   
Indeed, guerrilla-style filmmaking is nothing new. There’s a wonderful sequence in Stuntman in which their aging action coordinator sends the crew into the streets to film a robbery and gunfight without permits. It turns to chaos as civilians and actors are injured and the police turn up to arrest them. “It happened quite often in the Nineties,” says Albert. 
The sequence is specifically based on a story that lead actor Stephen Tung told them about making the Wong Kar-wai film, As Tears Go By (1988), on which Tung worked on as an action choreographer. “They shot without permits,” says Albert. “They had triads chasing people down the street with knives and machetes. Whenever they had to do a second take, they had to wait for an hour for the street to clear.”   
The Leungs, however, clarify that as Stuntman was funded by the Hong Kong government, their production was all above board. “We cheated once in a while just to get certain shots done,” Herbert says. “We finished this film in nineteen days – under eight million Hong Kong Dollars [around £789,000].” 
But Tung’s character, Sam, remains decidedly old school, turning from a lonely old man into a dictator on the set. He barks orders and pushes stuntmen to perform fights again and again until they get injured. That’s also based on reality, say the Leungs.  
“The year we started in the industry we were at the borderline,” says Albert. “I experienced that a lot of that in my early days.” 
Some of the old-school stunt guys had a formidable reputation for pushing their crews. That’s perhaps why the older generation are so banged up. “I’ve seen a lot of first-generation Jackie Chan stunt team who can’t walk properly,” says Albert. “They can’t even walk straight!” (Chan himself is well known for his numerous injuries from stunts: broken bones, a dislocated pelvis and sternum, a brain haemorrhage.)  
Stuntman plays on the tensions between generations – “When I was working, the younger generation really hated the older generation!” says Albert – though in reality there’s less shouting from old, grizzled stunt coordinators these days. “The last generation – we call them ‘sifu’, the ‘master’ – they’re retired,” says Albert. “The next generation, the ones who got that harsh treatment, realised that harshness doesn’t really help. So, now that the next generation are taking those spaces, it’s much better.”   
As for the lack of youngsters coming into the Hong Kong stunt game, Albert and Herbert explain that fewer people now train with the Chinese Opera, a tradition that combines theatre, martial arts, and acrobatics. Multiple martial arts actors and stunt performers attended Chinese Opera schools, including Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Woo-ping. 
“A lot of them came from the Chinese Opera,” says Herbert. “These days no parents would put their kids – especially in Hong Kong – through 10 years of physical training of gymnastics and flips and martial arts. A lot of parents now are more geared towards the academic – to find a job as a lawyer or doctor or whatever. The environment changes, the mentality changes. You don’t get a lot of that craft.” 
And the old school stunt guys, says Albert, were more resilient: “Even in the face of something they were afraid of, they’d still go for it. I think that’s a mentality that the younger generation should maintain.” 
After The Fall Guy, which starred Ryan Gosling as a stuntman, there seems to be something in the zeitgeist about paying more respect to the courageous but lowly stunt performer.  
For Albert and Herbert Leung, their tribute to Eighties action is about more than the quality of the stunt work – it says something about Hong Kong at large.  
“We latch on to the action film as a catalyst or vehicle to convey the idea that Hong Kong as a society was once doing really well,” says Albert. “Nowadays, as a younger generation, after you graduate it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you can’t afford to buy a house or a car – or to rent a place. The Eighties action movie to me is prosperity.” 
Stuntman is in UK cinemas now 
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