Piece of the Action
Donnie Yen turns heads and breaks bones in ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’
On a chilly Oscars eve, Donnie Yen has just returned from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where he was rehearsing for the Academy Awards. The “John Wick: Chapter 4” scene-stealer, who hails from southern China, feels good about how the following night might unfold, namely for his friend Michelle Yeoh. Her victory and that of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” would be a landmark moment for Asian representation.
“I’ve known her for more than 20 years, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here — to support her and share in a possible historical moment,” he says. “And ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ has a lot of Chinese language and it talks about the Chinese heritage, which I find out has been so accepted and embraced here.”
Sure enough, Yeoh took home best actress, becoming the first Asian to do so. As Yen moves closer to the heat lamp on the patio of a Beverly Hills hotel, he is cold and tired. After his plane from Hong Kong landed at LAX, he headed to rehearsals, which he calls an “overwhelming” scene.
“I had five script writers in the room sitting there typing,” he says. “Eight people surrounded me, and
I’m sitting in front of this monitor with the script, and I was joking that it felt like an interrogation.”
Tomorrow he’ll don a tuxedo. Today he’s wearing a gray Louis Vuitton hoodie. As one of China’s most recognizable actors — thanks to playing the eponymous Wing Chun grandmaster in the “Ip Man” films and squaring off against Jet Li in the wuxia hit “Hero” — he wants to blend in. He’s here to talk about “John Wick: Chapter 4,” an orgy of martial arts and gun play in which Yen’s blind assassin Caine is locked in a body-count contest with Keanu Reeves’ hit man.
The franchise keeps topping itself in terms of eye-popping stunts and box office grosses. The Chad Stahelski-helmed film set a franchise record when it debuted last weekend with $137.5 million worldwide.
Stahelski calls Yen a “machine of athleticism.”
“It’s the first time Keanu and Donnie interacted, and we were using the nunchucks,” Stahelski remembers. “We had a little piece of choreography — it was a bit of punch, kick, punch, kick, back and forth. We started moving, and you realize how fast Donnie really is.”
How Yen got that fast began in Boston. At 11, he and his family moved to the city after his journalist father was transferred from Hong Kong. His mother ran a martial arts school in Chinatown, and Yen befriended another eventual star, Michael Woods.
Seeing his potential, his parents sent him to China to train. A decade later, he was on his way to Chinese action star status. For much of the 1980s and ’90s, Yen made his mark with “Tiger Cage,” “Once Upon a Time in China II” and “Iron Monkey.” His success brought him back to the States, working on productions like “Blade II” and “Shanghai Knights.” But Hollywood proved bittersweet. He sparred with a producer on “Blade II” who didn’t want his input.
“Some people are more coldblooded,” he says of the experience. Other projects, like “The Expendables 2” and “Aquaman,” seemed promising but didn’t work out because of timing. “Zack Snyder called. It was a friendly call, and he said, ‘Would you like to consider a cameo in the film?’” he says of the James Wan-helmed DC movie.
Yen finds it hard to watch his cultural heritage bastardized in American films. He bristles at Quentin Tarantino’s depiction of martial arts legend Bruce Lee in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
“Obviously, he was making fun of Bruce,” he says. “It was cartoonish.”
Still, Yen is game to continue working in Hollywood. And he has a few ideas. “I’d love to do a ‘John Wick’ spinoff,” he says. As for the likelihood, he adds with a laugh: “There’s always ‘talks’ in Hollywood.”