Hard Boiled - Chow Yun Fat (1992) - The Jazz Club, D'Aguilar Street

Back to local movies for a while and one of my favourites in the form of Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun Fat, Tong Leung Chiu-wai and directed by John Woo. This was Woo's final HK movie before trying his luck in the US and I get the impression that he just wanted to blow the place up before he left.

I was lucky enough to catch this at my local arthouse cinema (the Hyde Park Picture House) in the UK when I was a final year student in Leeds in 1994.

The opening scenes (and later ones where John Woo appears in front of the camera playing an ex-cop-barman-mentor to Chow's character, Tequila) take place in a venue called "The Jazz Club". This was a real club located in the California Entertainment Building at 34-36 D'Aguilar Street. Sadly, not only has the club long gone but so has the building that housed it. The California Entertainment Building was demolished circa 2011 and has since been replaced by a larger version called California Tower. The new building has the address of 32 D'Aguilar Street but it also occupies the old site of 34 -36 as well.

For those that are interested and have Facebook (I don't), there is a group for the Jazz Club at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/thejazzclubhongkong/