Forget Cruise and Schwarzenegger: Why Chow Yun-Fat is cinema's greatest action hero

The Hong Kong actor made a series of films with director John Woo that revolutionised the action genre – and key to them was his beguiling mixture of toughness and tenderness. What makes an all-timer action star? Some stand out with their dexterous, daredevil stunts – think Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible franchise. Others' chief selling point is their Herculean physique, as exemplified by the 1980s Hollywood trio of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. But set against these invulnerable, seemingly immortal beings, there's one truly remarkable action performer who has been happy to show that he is all too human – Chow Yun-Fat, the star of some of Hong Kong's most pivotal, internationally influential action films. Two of the high-octane films he made with legendary Hong Kong director John Woo, A Better Tomorrow (1986) and Hard Boiled (1992), have been re-released in 4K recently. Now a third, 1989's The Killer, is hitting US cinemas this weekend. In this trio, Chow plays, respectively, a Triad gangster, a principled but hot-headed cop, and a remorseful assassin: what all three performances share is a beguiling mixture of resilience and vulnerabil