Blood Brothers (2007 film)

Blood Brothers is a directed by Alexi Tan and starring Daniel Wu, Shu Qi, Liu Ye and Tony Yang.

It was by the Taiwanese production company CMC Entertainment, the Chinese government-owned Sil-Metropole Organisation Ltd., 's Lion Rock Productions and Hong Kong film director John Woo, and is Woo's first time as producer of another director's film. The film was shot entirely in the People's Republic of China.

The film should not be confused with ''The Warlords'', a 2007 / starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau and Jet Li, that was at one point also called ''Blood Brothers''.

Cast

*Daniel Wu as Fung
*Liu Ye as Kang
*Tony Yang as Xiao Hu
*Shu Qi as Lulu
*Chang Chen as Mark
*Lulu Li as Su Zhen
*Sun Honglei as Boss Hong

Influences

''Blood Brothers'' is Alexi Tan's first feature film, though Tan has referred to it as "a combination of all my collaborators' work" including costume designer Tim Yip, cinematographer Michel Taburiaux, and of course producer John Woo.

Tan has stated that he draws upon his upbringing as an overseas Chinese, such that his vision of China and Chinese society will at once be Chinese and at the same time "different."

Production history

The idea for ''Blood Brothers'' first began to gain traction when producers John Woo and watched Tan's ''Double Blade'', a short film starring Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou, and contacted Tan expressing interest in producing a feature-length film with the young director. Up to this point, Tan had worked primarily as a fashion photographer.

Once Woo and Chang were on board, however, Tan was able to seriously develop his concept for the film. Given Tan's overseas upbringing and lack of speaking and writing ability , the screenplay was originally written in . As such, Tan collaborated with native Chinese writer, Jiang Dan to translate his film into natural sounding Chinese. Despite Tan's initial concerns that Jiang Dan would not understand the Leone or Peckinpah influences, he later felt that her contributions to the story helped flesh out the film's romantic elements and in particular expanded upon the feminine perspectives of Shu Qi's and Lulu Li's characters.

Fight choreography, in particular the film's many gun battles, was done by Hong Kong veteran action director Philip Kwok, who was also involved in the action choreography for John Woo's ''Hard Boiled''.