Danny Chan came to films as a dancer and a trained fighter, which is why Stephen Chow gave him the Axe Gang and why casting directors have kept handing him Bruce Lee. The first was a part; the second has become a job.
Fi1m perspective
In Kung Fu Hustle (2004) the Axe Gang are the men in black suits who run 1940s Shanghai and dance in the street when they have killed someone, and Brother Sum leads the dance with a dancer's vanity, head up, pleased with himself. We laughed at that dance and then felt slightly uncomfortable, because the men doing it have just put a hatchet in somebody and the film knows it. It is the kind of part Chow writes for him: a body in an ensemble, moving, with the rest of the frame supplying the joke.
He came to films from music, as singer of the rock band Poet, and spent the mid-1990s in minor parts. Stephen Chow gave him the two roles anyone remembers: Empty Hands in Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Brother Sum in Kung Fu Hustle three years later. Both are ensemble pictures that ask him to be one body among many, and his background in dance and choreography shows; he contributed sequences to Chow's films, including a Michael Jackson-styled dance in Shaolin Soccer. Then, from 2008, the face took over. He resembles Bruce Lee, he trained in Jeet Kune Do, and he was cast as Lee in the television series The Legend of Bruce Lee (2008), then again in Ip Man 3 (2015) and Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019). We have not reviewed those, so we will say only that playing the same dead man three times is a narrow road for an actor to walk.
What works is the physical stuff, the movement in fights and in dance, which is what Kung Fu Hustle uses him for. What works less well is everything between. In Shaolin Soccer he is one of six brothers and the film does not single him out, which is partly how Chow builds a comedy, spreading the jokes across the team, and partly a limit: given a line rather than a step, Chan is an ordinary supporting player. Chow is the director who has got the most out of him, twice, by writing parts in which the body does the talking. His later supporting roles have tended to turn up in lower-profile productions, The Rookies (2019) among them.
See Kung Fu Hustle for him, and watch what he does with his shoulders in the first ten minutes. A man who looks like Bruce Lee will be asked to look like Bruce Lee for as long as anyone is making films about Ip Man. Nobody seems in a hurry to ask him to be anyone else, and the Axe Gang suggests they should.
Biography
Danny Chan Kwok-kwan (born 1 August 1975) is a Hong Kong actor and martial artist. He began his career as the lead singer of the rock band Poet and appeared in minor roles in Hong Kong films. He first gained prominence in two films directed by Stephen Chow, playing the goalkeeper Empty Hands in Shaolin Soccer (2001) and the Axe Gang boss Brother Sum in Kung Fu Hustle (2004).
Owing to his physical resemblance to Bruce Lee, Chan has portrayed the martial artist in the television series The Legend of Bruce Lee (2008) and the films Ip Man 3 (2015) and Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019). He is a practitioner of Jeet Kune Do. He has also appeared in films including Monk Comes Down the Mountain (2015) and Kung Fu League (2018).
