MOSTLYFILM: Call Of Heroes

I'm never quite sure what to do about Fridays.

As you're probably aware, MostlyFilm generally publishes on three days a week - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You're probably also aware that whenever I contribute a piece to Europe's Best Website, I like to include a post of backup material here as well, in a healthy spirit of cross-promotion. When the original piece goes up on a Monday or a Wednesday, it's nice and easy: I'll post my backup the day after, in the gap between two MostlyFilm posts, and everyone's happy.

But what about when MostlyFilm publishes me on a Friday? Well, there are several possible options. Sometimes I post my backup material on the same day, or the day after, or leave it until the following week. Or, on the odd occasion, I forget to do it altogether and have to hurriedly cobble together something nearly a fortnight after the original article.

Which is why my review of the excellent Hong Kong action movie Call Of Heroes appeared on MostlyFilm on Friday January 6th, and this backup piece is appearing some thirteen days later. Sorry about that. Anyway, I've got some video clips for you featuring several of the people involved in the film, in case you were interested in finding out what they'd done before this one.

Let's start with the star of Call Of Heroes, Sean Lau, and see what he looked like nearly two decades ago. This is a car chase scene from Ringo Lam's 1997 thriller Full Alert - you may have to struggle a little to spot Lau in the middle of all the mayhem, but you'll definitely see him towards the end of the clip when things have calmed down a bit.

Next up, here's a very silly clip of baddie Louis Koo. This comes from All's Well Ends Well 2010, one of a series of ensemble romantic comedies made specifically for the Chinese New Year holiday. These films have literally nothing in common with each other apart from the title, which explains why this one is a period piece while other episodes are set in the present day.

Wandering adventurer Eddie Peng, like many of the younger movie stars in Hong Kong, is maintaining a music career on the side. Showing you how cross-promotion's really done, here he is performing the title song from his 2013 romcom A Wedding Invitation.

Moving on to the director of Call Of Heroes, Benny Chan. Chan's had a successful career as a director for over a quarter of a century, debuting in 1990 with the wildly popular A Moment Of Romance. Here's Andy Lau getting involved in another car chase as the getaway driver for a robbery: watch out towards the end for the first stages of the instance of Stockholm Syndrome which gives the film its title. It sounds all wrong when you put it like that, doesn't it?

We'll wrap up here with Call Of Heroes' not-so-secret weapon, action director Sammo Hung, seen here on screen in the 2005 thriller SPL (released as Kill Zone in some countries). Looping round nicely to the opening paragraph of the MostlyFilm review, this is his climactic scrap with Rogue One star Donnie Yen. You might think this is a pretty impressive fight (choreographed by Yen himself), but I'd recommend watching the whole movie to see what comes after it, as it's one of the most oh-fuck-they-went-there moments in HK cinema history.