Yin, Yam Bring Hong Kong to the ‘Cradle’
July 25, 2003
As the summer movie season approaches its peak, hardly a week goes by without a big-budget opening at some high-profile Los Angeles theater. But for Hong Kong actors Simon Yam and Terence Yin, last week marked their first Hollywood premiere as they walked the red carpet with star Angelina Jolie and other castmembers of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life at the historic Mann’s Chinese Theater.
In the Tomb Raider sequel, Yam and Yin play Chinese brothers who lead a notorious antiquities-theft ring and run up against Lara Croft (Jolie) after they steal a glass globe that contains the location of the original Pandora’s Box, hidden in a mysterious African region known as the Cradle of Life and believed to contain a deadly plague virus.
In a spectacular opening action scene set in the lost underwater temple of Alexander the Great, Chen Lo (Yam) and his brother, Xien (Yin), ambush Croft and escape with the mysterious globe. Croft pursues the pair to China (actually a reconstructed Chinese village built on location in Wales), where she confronts Chen Lo in a climactic sequence shot inside a cave full of life-size Chinese terracotta warriors.
Xien then flees to Shanghai with the mysterious object, where he sells it off to arch-villain Jonathan Reiss (Ciaran Hinds), but Croft and partner Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler) intervene in another impressive action sequence pitting Xien against Croft.
Like its predecessor, Cradle of Life contains near-nonstop action, globetrotting locations and an imaginative story line. Even if it doesn’t rise to the level of Oscar material, the Tomb Raider sequel makes for enjoyable popcorn entertainment and lets American audiences see two well-known Hong Kong actors in a major Hollywood blockbuster.
Although Tomb Raider stumbled at the box office last weekend (opening at No. 4), if it draws well from Asian Pacific American audiences over its run, the movie could still offer Yin and Yam a similar opportunity for crossover success realized by Hong Kong stars like Jet Li and Chow Yun-fat.
Simon Yam, a Hong Kong native, began his acting career in TV dramas, sitcoms, soap operas and martial arts series, appearing in his first film in 1979. Since then, he’s completed more than 125 movies and 40 TV shows, playing a wide variety of characters, including cops, villains and romantic leads.
AW: Was it difficult for you to adjust to the more deliberate pace of Hollywood filmmaking?
Simon Yam: No, as soon as you know the culture, it makes it easier for me to get involved, get in the mood, get ready to shoot.
AW: What are you thinking might develop for your career in Hollywood or internationally as a result of Tomb Raider?
Yam: I’m so proud because I was a castmember of Tomb Raider and I hope audiences will love my character. I came to Hollywood because I love traveling, so when I work on a Hollywood movie, I spend four months, then go back to Hong Kong to make another film and then to China. … So I’m not sitting in L.A. waiting for four of five years to make a movie.
AW: So what’s next for you?
Yam: I’ll be in Johnny To’s PTU Part II when I go back to Hong Kong. I was in the first PTU and everyone said it was very good. And then I have to make a Ringo Lam movie.
Terence Yin was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Southern California with his movie director father and actress mother in 1982, growing up in Monterey Park, east of Los Angeles. Yin attended UC Berkeley, where he studied rhetoric, before returning to Asia and signing a recording contract in Taiwan. Shortly afterwards, he was cast in his first Hong Kong movie, going on to appear in 18 more films and two TV series.
AsianWeek: What was it like for you working with Angelina Jolie, not just on the scenes you were in together, but working with her on the set for weeks at a time?
Terence Yin: She’s great. She was really easygoing on set. She brought her kid around and we’d play with the kid and we’d chat — it was a very easy atmosphere.
AW: Your big scene was the Flower Pagoda Square sequence, which was shot on a set outside London that doubled for an actual location in Shanghai.
Yin: It was a very detailed set. They would have tea in the teahouses and thousand-year-old eggs roasting in the pots, like it would be in China. You would not think that you were on a set. I think the biggest challenge was, with so much going on, there isn’t actually that much space to convey certain things that you think the character should convey. You try to do the best you can within those constraints to give the audience a sense of what your character should be doing at that time.
AW: How has this opportunity to work in a Hollywood movie changed the trajectory of your career?
Yin: Basically, I’m a Hong Kong actor and I’m still working in Hong Kong. I think it’s an interesting beginning, because it’s opened me up to a certain degree to the possibility of spending some time in the States. Whereas I don’t have plans to move out of Hong Kong at this point, it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
AW: Do you see your role in Tomb Raider as part of the ongoing trend that has Hong Kong actors appearing in big Hollywood movies?
Yin: What you’re seeing is that the perspective that Hollywood, or the Western media, has is broadening and I’m very happy to be part of that process.
For [the filmmakers] to have us — two non-action stars — come in and do this picture, I think that’s a good first step. When you start seeing more and more Asian faces in Hollywood, slowly people are going to realize that Asians don’t fit into this little niche. The more people feel comfortable seeing an Asian face in a big production like Tomb Raider, the more people will be able to accept the fact that there are actually many different Asians or Asian Pacific Americans and we’ll slowly be able to portray that in film.
AW: Do you have any concern that the presentation of Asians in Tomb Raider comes across through fairly stereotypical “villainous Asian” roles?
Yin: Well, yeah, but I think you have to start somewhere. Obviously, this is not the ideal portrayal. Hopefully, one day you’re going to see an Asian leading man in a Hollywood movie acting in a role that can be played by any American.
AW: What will you be working on next?
Yin: I’ll be shooting something in mid-August in Hong Kong, a little romantic movie, but I can’t really talk about the project in detail right now. And I know of two other projects that I’m attached to in Hong Kong within the next two to three months.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is currently playing in theaters nationwide.
Contact Justin Lowe at nextwavve@yahoo.com.
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