Contender For Lust Caution Main Character

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Author: teropong | October 24, 2007 - 10:49 am

Ask any Tony Leung Chiu Wai fan which actor can fit into his role as Mr Yee in Lust, Caution – or take his place in any role on the big screen – and you will most likely be greeted with silence.

To many, the actor is irreplaceable. Ang Lee’s selection of Tony Leung Chiu Wai is the best, and many agrees with his selection.

Most of all, Tony is the best choice to be coupled with the beautiful Tang Wei.
There are some erotic scenes in the movie, and not much actors are ready to take the role yet.

We rate five leading men from Asia and wonder: Is there really no one who can do a Tony Leung in Lust Caution?

Chang Chen, 30

Taiwanese actor who made his film debut in Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day when he was 14. His other most memorable role was in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which he played a prince of the desert who stole Zhang Ziyi’s heart.

Why he he’s good: Arguably one of the best actors to have emerged from Taiwan in the past decade, he specialises in playing sensitive, brooding characters. His understated, reserved style is reminiscent of a younger Leung.

Thanks to him, flicks like last year’s horror movie Silk – which he fronted because Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro both turned down the special agent role – are spared from mediocrity.

Why he’s not: He does not have Leung’s electrifying screen presence nor his box-office appeal to make it big.

Kaneshiro Takeshi, 33

The actor, who is of Japanese-Taiwanese parentage, hails from Taiwan and is regarded as one of the sexiest men in Chinese showbiz.

Why he’s good: Famously reclusive, he is even more mysterious – and some would say more fascinating – than Leung. He plays that air of elusiveness to his advantage when he is cast in lonesome, conflicted roles, such as the ex-cop fighting his inner demons in Confession of Pain.

Why he’s not: Too young. The Mr Yee role calls for a certain worldliness that comes with maturity, which Leung has. Give Kaneshiro a few more years to harden himself and he may be able to deliver.

Aaron Kwok, 41

Dancer-turned-actor from Hong Kong who made it big as a pop singer.

Why he’s good: No one can doubt his ambition to be a serious actor after his back-to-back Golden Horse wins for Best Actor in After This Our Exile (2006) and Divergence (2005). Who would have thought that the pretty boy could portray a good-for-nothing father and a macho cop so convincingly?

Why he’s not: He still suffers from being too pretty. Kwok has admitted that it is hard for him to shed his pop idol image.

Andy Lau, 46

Singer-actor who started his career in Hong Kong in the 1980s. He has since made more than 100 films and was crowned Golden Horse Best Actor in 2004 for his role in Infernal Affairs III.

Why he’s good: No one in the industry is as hardworking or tries as hard to improve. His love for commercial flicks has resulted in him taking a longer time to gain recognition for his acting chops, but he does have talent. He would not be out of his element playing a bad guy role like Mr Yee. He has already proved he can play conniving characters – as a triad mole in the Infernal Affairs instalments and a drug lord in Protégé.

Why he’s not: His acting skills lack the subtlety and grace that Leung has patented. That is what separates great actors from the merely good.

Daniel Wu, 33

American-born model-turned-actor who broke into the Hong Kong movie scene playing a homosexual cod in Bishonen.

Why he’s good: He has street-cred tackling baddie roles – he was crowned best supporting actor in the Golden Horse Awards in 2005 for portraying a terrorist in New Police Story. He has the right connections too. Superstar Jackie Chan regards him as his son, and has praised him for being “pretty good” and “obedient”.

Why he’s not: Like Aaron Kwok, he is cursed with a pretty face and can’t play tortured or soulful roles. – The Sunday Times, Singapore/ Asia News Network

source : thestar

tony leung chie wai tang wei lust caution

Caution: Female readers of a sensitive nature should proceed further. Lust: Because whether they like guys who are dreamboats or fellas who are hero hunks, actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai – who has played both sorts of roles in his time – is the hottie everyone’s talking about right now because of that movie.

Or more particularly, the steamy scenes featuring him and Tang Wei in director Ang Lee’s latest offering, the irresistibly-titled Lust, Caution, set in war-time Shanghai.

The scenes of a naked Leung playing the part of a married intelligence official indulging in a torrid affair with a student posing as a tai tai were cut, to much controversy.

This story is not going into the ins and outs – pardon the pun – of all that.

This is a piece on Chinese cinema’s finest, and most enigmatic, actor.

Shin Min Daily News’ entertainment journalist Sharon Toh reckons that Leung, who can convey “much complex emotion simply with his eyes”, is possibly the best leading man in Chinese showbiz.

“There are many equally outstanding actors who can shine in supporting roles, but if you are talking about someone who can carry the entire movie by himself, then Leung is the undisputed choice,” she says.

Leung, 45, has been a celebrity since his days on TV in the 1980s and his love life continues to hog the tabloid headlines.

Most recent stories have it that he and his Suzhou-born actress girlfriend Carina Lau, 41, are together again after she cold-shouldered her suitor, Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou, 56.

In interviews, Leung has laid bare the facts of his life: He was born in Hong Kong in 1962 and had an unhappy childhood after his father walked out on the family when he was eight. That soured his attitude towards marriage and it might also be why he has yet to tie the knot with Lau after 18 long years.

Despite these juicy revelations, the real Tony Leung somehow stays out of sight. “Mysterious, elusive, shy” are words he has used to describe himself.

By his own admission, he lives in a world that only a few – his mother, sister and Lau – can enter.

“Sometimes, I don’t even know if I’ve really let them in. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that it’s become a habit – I’m too used to protecting myself,” he has said.

But on screen, safe in a character’s skin, he opens up more.

In 2000’s In the Mood for Love, he is a married but lonely newspaperman sending his feelings for a married female friend in furtive glances.

In 2002’s Infernal Affairs, he is a policeman who has been undercover in a triad for too many years. You can feel the exhaustion and despair in his eyes.

And in Lust, Caution, he plays a bad, bad man. But Leung makes you side with his character ever so masterfully when the villain’s mask cracks and his eyes betray a speck of tenderness for his new lover.

The actor hasn’t always been this good, of course.

Everybody has to start somewhere and he began in his childhood as a reluctant baddie in the home movies made by his buddy, future comedian Stephen Chow.

He left school at 15 to ease his mother’s financial burden and started working as a paper boy, among other things. Later, he applied for TVB station’s acting courses and became an actor in 1982.

He had his first taste of success with the serial, The Duke of Mount Deer (1984), playing Wei Xiaobao, a prostitute’s son who charms his way to the title.

He had a career-changing shoot on the set of auteur Wong Kar Wai’s Days of Being Wild (1991). Leung shows up only in the final few minutes of the period movie, as a man preparing to go out.

Wong planned Days as a two-parter and Leong’s scene was one of many the director shot for Part Two, before giving it up. But he was so fond of the scene that he kept it in Part One. And Leung was reborn as a great actor.

Leung went on to do more films with Wong, like Chungking Express (1994), in which his lonesome cop talks to his dish towel.

The Chinese-language press has waxed lyrical about the actor’s electrifying gaze. But maybe, beginning with Wong, directors have also seen something else in those eyes. Soulfulness. Melancholy.

Leung has said: “Actually, the more I act, the more I feel I’m playing myself. It’s my views and emotions filtered through my own experiences.”

The real Tony is living out his sadness on the big screen. Can you resist? – The Sunday Times, Singapore/ Asia News Network

source : thestar

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