1. 1. Pugsley argues that Hong Kong films such as Infernal Affairs and Overheard bear a “long-standing imprint of Japanese Yakuza and martial arts action films.”
2. 2. Veteran local megastar Chow Yun-Fat was the icon of John Woo’s 1980s–1990s heroic bloodshed masterpieces and the Hong Kong crime thriller’s heyday. Project Gutenberg explicitly acknowledges and explores Chow’s association with that history; Painter is heavily involved in gunfights, and Woo’s classical iconography of Chow holding guns in both hands and moving in slow motion recurs.
3. Abbas, Ackbar. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. U of Minnesota P, 1997.
4. Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. British Film Institute, 1999.
5. Associated Press. “Mak Hopes for Hit in China.” The Hollywood Reporter, 29 July 2009, hollywoodreporter.com/news/mak-hopes-hit-china-87031. Accessed 7 Jan. 2020.