Has anyone mentioned “The Corruptor”, with Chow Yun Fat as NYPD Lieutenant Nick Chen?
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Has anyone mentioned “The Corruptor”, with Chow Yun Fat as NYPD Lieutenant Nick Chen?
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Back on page 2, as it happens.
Also as it happens, I was about to add that the aforementioned Liufau was in the aforementioned “The Ghost” with George Cheung – who, sure, was Detective Fong in “White Tiger”, but who I’m mentioning because he was also in “New York Cop”, with Tôru Nakamura top-billed as the titular NYPD officer.
(Well, sort of; IMDB gives Nakamura top billing, but the movie poster it shows bills him second under his gangleader nemesis Chad McQueen. But come on: could there even be a more NYPD title than “New York Cop”? It approaches perfection!)
Anyhow, here’s the trailer – and, yes, that’s Cheung with the gun; and, yes, that’s Mira Sorvino, a scant two years before earning her “Mighty Aphrodite” Oscar, as Nakamura’s love interest and McQueen’s sister; you can see where this is going.
Also appearing in “New York Cop”: Paul J. Q. Lee – who later got work on, y’know, “New York Undercover”. Also appearing in “New York Undercover” – years before he was the insurance investigator in “Life of Pi”, and before fielding roles ranging from ‘police sergeant’ to ‘police captain’ – was James Saito, as Detective Chang.
As per IMDB, also appearing on “New York Undercover” was Takeo Matsushita, who reveals he’s an undercover US Marshal and gets his man up on the big screen in…
…“The Spanish Prisoner”. Of course, we don’t really get to see it coming, because we pretty much see things from the protagonist’s perspective – and as far as he can tell, the swindler who’s been conning him and framing him has been a step ahead of him for, like, the length of the movie – but the big twist-ending reveal is that (a) well, yes, that’s true; but (b) the innocuous dude who’s been standing right there is on the job and one step ahead of the real criminal.
And that movie was awesome.
NEW YORK UNDERCOVER also featured Lee Wong in dozens of episodes, but as the Medical Examiner – also named Wong! – which I’m still not sure counts.
But it also also featured Sandrine Holt, who (a) was born to a Cantonese father and a French mother, and who (b) is currently up on the big screen as Detective Cheung of the San Francisco police department in TERMINATOR GENISYS – long after she © held down the recurring role of Detective Jenny Cho on LAS VEGAS.
Holt also got work on THE LISTENER – just like Hiro Kanagawa, who got mentioned back in July; what didn’t get mentioned back in July is that Kanagawa played Detective Miyashiro in BEST FRIENDS, with Megan Gallagher – sure as he played a detective on MILLENNIUM, with Megan Gallagher – sure as Megan Gallagher was also in FIRST TO DIE, because that’s who you cast if “friends in San Francisco investigate a serial killer targeting newlyweds”; and, since Gallagher’s in it, so is Kanagawa.
Also – after playing Agent Kurosaka in that A Child Is Missing TV movie back when with Henry Winkler – Kanagawa was a detective in a TV movie with Corbin Bernsen, as well as a detective in a big-screen movie with Bill Pullman, as well as a detective in Little Brother Of War, as well as a detective in The Entrance.
(Hey, remember The Company You Keep, with Redford as the Weather Underground radical who’s been low-key on the run since that guard died back when, and now the FBI is back on his trail and closing in? Kanagawa was, well, Agent Kanagawa.)
Kanagawa also had a recurring role as Principal Kwan on SMALLVILLE, and even then they couldn’t resist always having him find a dead body in the school parking lot, or discover that the football coach was helping players cheat on their tests, and so on, because to even look at that guy is to think “clues at the scene of the crime”.
Anyhow, I’d gladly six-degrees-of-separation over to that show’s Lana Lang – the equally alliterative Kristin Kreuk, who as I write this is top-billed in tonight’s season finale of her latest series, where she plays an NYPD homicide detective – but, of course, she already got mentioned back on Page One.
And so I’ll instead go with Françoise Yip – who, in between putting in appearances as Constable Kelly Mah on BEACHCOMBERS, held down the recurring role of Dr. Lia Teng: the molecular biologist who’s forever doing interesting stuff with Kryptonian blood for one Luthor or another – and I mention her because she’s of Chinese ancestry via her father, and French-Canadian ancestry via her mother, and following SMALLVILLE got plenty of work playing Detective Kate Lam on BLOOD TIES.
(You maybe remember her from SANCTUARY, as UN security inspector Lillian Lee?)
Yip also got work on FLATLAND – as did Kee Chan, who played Detective Derek Li on WATER RATS after playing a big-screen detective in FRAUDS.
Chan was also in SINGAPORE SLING, with Tony Yeow as Inspector Lao.
I don’t think it has been mentioned yet - but I nominate The Mystery Files Of Shelby Woo. 41 TV episodes in the 90s. Detective of Asian descent - check (the underrated Irene Ng with Pat Morita as her grandfather). She’s the man character - heck even the Title Character. The only thing that may discount it is that it is a children’s show.
Came up back on page three.
I don’t see why that should discount it. But in that spirit, lemme mention TIMECOP 2: Jason Scott Lee is the title character, and is so worthy an adversary to the crook he’s hunting that said crook aims to off him by offing our hero’s ancestors – including Kenneth Choi, who’s never not good, as his dad, who apparently loved him some disco dancing and embarrassingly timely outfits back in the day – and our hero’s journey takes him from back when there were Chinese laborers in the Old West to back when Hitler could’ve been stopped before it was too late, but at what price? – and various reviews say it’s better than the original.
But what may discount it is that, y’know, it’s TIMECOP 2.
And since Jason Scott Lee is maybe most famous for having played Bruce Lee in that biopic back when, I’m reminded that Brandon Lee probably deserves quick mention for playing Jake Lo in RAPID FIRE.
(It didn’t have to be that way; the whole point is that he accidentally witnesses a killing, so mob enforcers keep trying to kill him while cops keep trying to keep him alive to testify, so he keeps having to use his kung-fu skills in self-defense – and that’s, like, pretty much a whole action movie right there, once you’ve thrown in some quips and given the guy a love-interest subplot. But instead of stopping there, they decided, hey, wait; how about the star of our show eventually decides to go on the offense against the bad guys, taking the good guys up on the offer to take an active role in the investigation instead of just waiting around for the next attack? And so it’ll turn out that he’s, like, way better at going undercover than any of the gun-and-badge types – and, upon discovering the requisite evidence for them, it’ll turn out that his law-enforcement backup will have gotten captured, and he’ll have to rescue them!)
At that, Hoon Lee – no relation – played Detective Lee on NYC 22 not long after playing Detective Tuan on BLUE BLOODS; you maybe know him from BANSHEE as the computer expert who knows all about forged documents, excels at tracking down crooks, and is otherwise a danged useful ally to the small-town sheriff who isn’t actually qualified to do the job he never actually got appointed to.
There’s also Karen Tsen Lee – who’s set to portray Yoko Ono in The Lennon Report later this year, after she’d busily put in appearances in 2014 and 2013 and 2012 and 2011 as DNA Tech Susan Chung on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which maybe doesn’t count, so just to make sure I’ll add quick mention of Tony Lee, who played Detective Lee on episode after episode of Dragnet before landing the recurring role of Lieutenant Charles Yi on JAG. (I ask you: was Yi a scuba-diving explosives expert? Maybe a hotshot fighter pilot, or a hardworking member of the medical corps, or the long-suffering XO on a destroyer? Don’t be ridiculous; he was an investigator for the Office of Naval Intelligence.)
And for a Chinese-and-Japanese-and-Korean-ancestry trifecta, there’s Byron Lawson, who got the recurring role of Detective Lee on KILLER INSTINCT after he was Lee Chen, the head-of-security-who-investigates-stuff-and-is-also-a-secret-agent on JEREMIAH – after he was Amos Lee on THESE ARMS OF MINE, which doesn’t count, but, dang, that’s a lot of guys named “Lee”. (Granted, in SNAKES ON A PLANE he was Eddie Kim, so it’s not like he can’t not play a guy named Lee, but still.)
I guess I kinda lost the six-degrees-of-separation thing and went off on a weird “Lee” tangent there, huh? Anyhow, may as well switch gears entirely with mention of Detective Joseph Song from STRANGE BLOOD, who was played by James Adam Lim.
Hey, remember how THOR: THE DARK WORLD cleared a hundred million dollars after passing the half-a-billion-dollar mark? And how many hundreds of millions of dollars AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON made after passing the billion-dollar mark?
And remember how – in between – Michael Mann wrote and directed and produced BLACKHAT, which despite the star power of Chris Hemsworth somehow failed to break even? Or even get halfway there? Or even get close to a third of the way there? Maybe that’s because everybody believes the towering-and-broad-shouldered guy as the strongest man on the planet, but ain’t nobody believes him as the brainiest hacker around. For, y’know, pretty much any value of ‘around’.
Still, that was the conclusion relayed in said movie by Leehom Wang as Captain Chen Dawai – who gets tasked with tracking down the folks who’ve been hacking computers all over the globe, and soon (a) recognizes the code used in one of the hacks, and (b) realizes it was written back when by the tall blond prisoner who’d now sure be a big help to my investigation, so how about the FBI cooperates by letting him out to tag along when I leave here to start looking for evidence in Hong Kong?
(And, of course, once they get to Hong Kong, Andy On is go as Inspector Alex Trang.)
I see the TV-show version of MINORITY REPORT is set to debut tonight – complete with Li Jun Li (who was Maggie Huang, on DAMAGES) as a crime scene technician, because, hey, even in a world where precognitive murder-predictors are a thing, somebody still has to go out there and do actual old-timey detective work, right?