King of Chess

King of Chess (1991)

棋王

Two independent stories involving chess wizards are interwoven to satirize the politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as well as Taiwan's capitalist boom of the 1970's.

Date of release
1991-09-06
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (16)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Drama
Director
Yim Ho, Tsui Hark

Casting

Interesting facts

King of Chess is a 1991 Hong Kong drama film directed by Yim Ho. Following disputes with the films producer Tsui Hark, Yim Ho left the project and Tsui Hark completed the film, though Yim Ho remains credited as the sole director.

Production

The film is adapted from two different novels called King of Chess, one by Ah Cheng and one by Cheung Hay Kwok.

Taiwanese film director Chang Tso-chi worked as director's assistant on King of Chess.

Several reviewers noted a distinct difference in filmmaking styles during different parts of the film and presumed the film to be the work of more than one director.

In his book Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, author David Bordwell wrote that Tsui Hark "took over Yim Ho's King of Chess".

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "Yim Ho — the gifted director of Homecoming (1984), which I reviewed favorably when it showed at Facets Multimedia in late 1987 — started shooting King of Chess in Taipei around that time, from a script that he wrote with Tony Leung, one of his lead actors. But the following year Yim either quit the film or was fired, apparently due to its escalating budget.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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