Company - Ajay Devgan (2002) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

Shot in 2002, Company is a Hindi-language Indian film, supposedly based on some real life gangster shenanigans, that centres around the relationship of a major gangster, Mallik (Ajay Devgan) and his trusted associate, Chandu (Vivek Oberoi). I wish there was an English S/T of this film because it really was good, despite me not understanding the language. If you want to watch the version I saw, then you can find it on this Youtube channel.

Anyway, Mallik and Chandu move to Hong Kong and plan more of their nefarious work from here until a contract they have been hired to carry out causes dissension between the two men. Chandu wants to abort the elaborate vehicle hijack but Mallik carries it out anyway. More than half the film has already passed at this point and Chandu flees as Mallik tries to get him and his girlfriend eliminated. What follows is about 30 minutes of tit-for-tat killing as the Indian police standby and let it all play out.

The first Hong Kong scenes we see is as the gangsters arrive at Hong Kong Airport with their entourage.

Gen Y Cops - Edison Chen (2000) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

The police go to the airport to welcome the FBI contingent and their robot.

Hacker - Callan McAuliffe (2016) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

Next up is a foreign production for a change. It stars Callan McAuliffe as Alex, a computer hacker who teams up with a couple of other people to get rich by internet fraud and who catch the attention of a criminal mastermind who involves them in a plot to crash the US stock market so that they can reap the rewards when the market rebounds. Hmm, for some reason that sounds especially believable this week following what Trump has just done with the Global Tariffs (as I write in April 2025). The release date was 2016 but it looks like it may have been filmed a couple of years earlier.

Watch the film here (until it gets taken down).

The Hong Kong section of the film starts with the trio arriving at Hong Kong International Airport.

Strangers - John Simm (2018) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

Well, just a few posts ago we were at the departures section of Terminal 1, for this show we catch a quick glimpse of the arrivals part as Jonah gets to the front of the taxi line and is promptly queue jumped by the person behind him. I'm not sure I have ever been queue jumped at the airport, but it has definitely happened to me plenty of times elsewhere.

Snowden - Joseph Gordon-Levitt (2016) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

Snowden makes a bid for freedom via a flight to South America. He gets this from HKIA and in real life this caused a big stink between the US and HK.

Boarding Gate - Asia Argento (2007) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

Boarding Gate is directed by Olivier Assayas who will probably be more familiar to HK film fans as the French guy that Maggie Cheung married after she starred in his film Irma Vep. The first half of the film is set in France and the action doesn't move to Hong Kong until well over an hour later as the main character (played by Asia Argento) escapes there to start her new life.

Sadly for us, many of the HK locations that we could look at are largely obscured and blurred by the multiple close up shots of the film's stars - this may have been deliberate but really means that for the most part it seems pointless to have come all this way when the scenes could have been shot anywhere. It turns out much of the HK filming was done guerilla-style without the required permits (and, no doubt, payoffs to the local gangsters/police - they're both the same these days) which may account for some of the styling.

Anyway, regardless, there are some interesting places to see if you squint your eyes at the screen. But to start off here is a quick view of the main character - Sandra - as she arrives in Hong Kong.

Rush Hour 2 - Jackie Chan (2001) - Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok

Fittingly, the final scene involving Hong Kong is outside the Terminal 1 building at HKIA as Carter is ordered back to the USA. You can just see the Zone 4 sign on the top picture which is actually the furthest drop of area, so the camera was placed at the very far end of the building (as you can see from the Streetview grab below).