The Head Hunter - Chow Yun Fat (1982) - French Mission Building, Central

Next up is The Head Hunter, a 1982 Seasonal production starring Chow Yun Fat as Yuen Lik, a Vietnamese refugee in Hong Kong who earns his keep by carrying out assassinations for a corrupt film producer (Tang Ching). He goes about doing his bosses bidding until he falls for a local TV journalist (Rosamund Kwan) who is investigating a string of mysterious deaths.

I first saw this film when it was included on the "Millcreek Entertainment 100 Greatest Martial Arts Classics" collection. The print was fairly poor so I never really watched it with much concentration and only recently, after realising one of the filming locations was of significant interest to me, gave it another go via a copy uploaded to the Internet Archive. The quality was just as poor, as you'll see by the screencaps, but the story is quite good and anything with Chow Yun Fat is always worth a watch.

The film starts with an assassination by one of Yuen's friends/compatriots, but the assassin is killed afterwards by the police and Yuen believes his friend let himself get caught deliberately to escape his similar predicament. This scene was shot in the area located between the old Govt Office Main Wing, St John's Cathedral and the French Missionary Building (formerly used as the  Court of Final Appeal). That's the French Missionary building on the right of the top image. I have no idea if the cannon is still at the top of the steps that leads up the the old Govt office building.

I believe the lower image was shot in front of the East Wing section of the building, but happy to be corrected. The buildings are now part of the Justice Department.