After a brief stint in the United States, Tsui Hark came back to Hong Kong cinema with Time and Tide, starring then-rising star Nicholas Tse and rock star Wu Bai. A young man (Tse) becomes a bodyguard so he can pay for the expenses of a pregnant fling. He runs into a former mercenary (Wu), who must protect his pregnant wife and crime lord father-in-law from his former associates looking for payback. The two men form an uneasy partnership with one eye on survival and the other on a briefcase full of cash. Tsui eschews the slow motion effect and bullet ballet that became signatures of 1980s Hong Kong cinema as he adopts a breakneck pace for an action film of the new millennium.

Tsui Hark (b. 1951, Vietnam) spent his early years in Vietnam before moving to Hong Kong, where he completed his high school education. He then moved to the United States where he graduated from the film programme at the University of Texas at Austin. After a short spell of work in the US, he returned to Hong Kong and became a director at TVB. Later, during a brief stint at Commercial Television, he directed The Gold Dagger Romance (1978). The Butterfly Murders (1979), Tsui’s feature film directorial debut, was hailed as one of the early examples of the Hong Kong New Wave. Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980) faced censorship from the colonial government for its uncompromising vision. Tsui would break ground with Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) by introducing Hollywood special effects to the wuxia genre. For much of the 1980s, Tsui was one of the creative masterminds behind the hitmakers Cinema City.

In 1984, he and Nansun Shi founded Film Workshop, which launched with the critically acclaimed Shanghai Blues. Tsui and his company found much success in several popular long-running film series, including A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), The Swordsman (1990), and Once Upon a Time in China (1991). In a career spanning over four decades, Tsui has not stopped finding new ways to reinvent himself as a director, writer, and producer. His take on the wuxia genre has continued to evolve in The Blade (1995) and the Detective Dee series. His Chinese war epic, The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014), impressed audiences in China and abroad for his creative storytelling and eye for spectacle.