John Woo’s ‘Manhunt’ to have world premiere at Venice fest
HONG KONG: Top Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo’s muchawaited thriller Manhunt will have its world premiere out- ofcompetition at the upcoming 74th Venice Film Festival.
The film is about a prosecutor, played by award-winning Chinese actor Zhang Hanyu, who is framed for robbery, rape and multiple murders and sets out on a difficult solo mission to clear his name. Japanese heartthrob actor and singer Masaharu Fukuyama plays the detective chasing Zhang’s character.
The film, which is a remake of a 1976 Japanese classic action movie, is produced by Hong Kong’s Media Asia.
Manhunt marks Woo’s return to the the police thriller genre that made him famous in Hong Kong with The Killer and Hardboiled before he relocated to Hollywood in the 1990s, where he shot studio blockbusters such as Mission: Impossible II, Face/Off and Windtalkers. Woo recently returned to Asia, directing epics including Red Cliff and The Crossing and also executive producing a remake of cult hit A Better Tomorrow.
The director has a close rapport with Venice, where he was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in 2010.
Completing the Lido lineup, the festival also announced on Monday that it has added Italian director Andrea Segre’s L’ordine delle cose, a drama about an illegal-immigration task force policeman on a delicate mission in present- day Libya, which will premiere as a special event.
The final added title is documentary The Enigma of Jean Touch in Turin directed by Marco di Castri, Paolo Favaro, and Daniele Pianciola, about pioneering French filmmaker Jean Rouch, who is considered one of the founders of cinémavérité in France, and the making of his forgotten film Enigma, shot in Turin. It will screen in the Venice Classics documentaries section.
The Venice fest will run from Aug 30 to Sept 9.