The Champions - Stuart Damon (1967) - Hennessy Road, Wanchai

Next up in our montage of Hong Kong establishing scenes is a view along Hennessy Road. This particular street corner is the junction with Marsh Road and you can see the same curved building in this earlier photo over on Gwulo.com. I'm still not sure when this library footage was shot but you can see that the adverts on the corner of the building were in place during the late 50s. Those with a bit of HK knowledge might be able to discern the old Tung Tak pawnshop building that was this side of the Marsh Road junction. You can see its old vertical blue sign on the left in both images below.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Marsh Road, Wanchai

After leaving the ambulance at Canal Road West because the double-decker bus won't fit under the flyover, Silva manages to somehow turn the bus around, head back up the way he came and take a turn into Marsh Road. The film camera looks to have been placed on the pavement at the side of the flyover, luckily almost exactly where the Google car took its Streetview pictures from so we can compare the exact same angle.

In the Streetview grab you can see that the famous Tung Tak Pawnshop - the low rise building at the back on the corner of Marsh and Hennessy. Sadly this place was eventually demolished only just last year. A sad way for such a nicely designed and historical building to go and yet another sad indictment of HK's official policy towards heritage conservation.

In the lower pictures the only change has been the replacement of the two end blocks by a newer building and its podium floor. It's called the Sun Group Building.

Five Golden Dragons - Bob Cummings (1967) - Marsh Road, Wanchai

Here is one I missed the first time around, it's an easy ID to be honest and I thought I had already done it but apparently not. It's when Sylvia Rohm leaves the Police HQ over in Kowloon and is then followed around by a detective. One of the roads they go down is Marsh Road, identifiable by the very obvious road sign in the screen cap. To help things along with the specific location though is the nearby hydrant #15. In fact (and assuming the water department keeps the same hydrant numbers) the hydrant in question is #115 and is on the corner with Lockhart Road. So I think we can say with reasonable confidence that this brief scene was on the section of Marsh Road between Lockhart and Jaffe (the camera is looking north).

I'm not sure what the brown marbled building is in the top picture but the most recent construction on that plot of land (on the corner of Jaffe and Marsh) is the Mira Moon Hotel.

Rush Hour 2 - Jackie Chan (2001) - Marsh Road, Wanchai

The junction between Marsh Road and Jaffe Road features quite a bit because it's where we first encounter Ricky Tan and his entourage. The scenes supposedly outside the sauna were filmed on Jaffe Road but we also see Carter walking down Marsh Road when he accidentally stumbles across the same location later on. The top picture shows us Jaffe Road looking east towards Marsh Road with the latter's road ramp. The same ramp behind Carter as he walks north towards the junction with Jaffe.

The last picture above is looking in the other direction down Jaffe Road and you can see the Canal Road flyover at the far end. There's been a significant amount of redevelopment in this small section of Jaffe Road, most recently with the completion of the Mira Moon Hotel on the corner south east corner of the junction - next to where Carter is standing in the picture below.

Hong Kong 97 - Robert Patrick (1994) - Marsh Road, Wanchai

Just after the shootout, Patrick's character makes a run for it and is picked up by his buddies on Marsh Road just a few yards away from the gunfight on Lockhart Road.

The sad story about this scene for me is the fact that the Tung Tak Pawnshop that stood on the corner of Marsh and Hennessy - and its columns can be seen on the right of several shots below - has only just recently been demolished. The sad thing is it was only one of four remaining curved corner shophouses left in the whole territory.

It looks like this small section of Marsh Road (between Hennessy and Lockhart) was a three-lane road back in 1993/4 but these days the pavement has been expanded and narrowed it to two lanes. Here's the Streetview.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Wanchai Harbourfront, Hong Kong

The whole series of Yellowthread Street uses some great aerial shots of the territory and the next one is from Episode 3: Key Witness. We have a nice sweeping view that starts from the Wanchai Interchange (the big roundabout below) and then pans west towards Central.

The flyover that crosses the main road (Gloucester Rd) towards the sports ground is Marsh Road. Just below we can see the black side of the Sun Hung Kai Centre.

The pool belongs to the Harbour Road Sports Centre and is called Wanchai Training Pool. All seem to have so far survived despite all the current reclamation going on.

This is the interesting bit (for me, at least) because it shows the area that is now occupied by Central Plaza (opened 1992) and where then small semi circle protrudes into the harbour is now occupied by the Convention and Exhibition Centre - the venue where the handover ceremony was held in 1997. The white building behind the Sun Hung Kai Centre is the China Resources Building and in front of that is a bare site which is where Central Plaza now stands. Despite all this redevelopment, I think most of these buildings still stand including the curved structure (next to the semi-circle) which is the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel.

The final few pictures looking over towards a rather misty looking Central, with HMS Tamar obvious (the square piece of water) at the harbourfront and for the more eagle-eyed of you should see the white with black stripes side of the Bank Of America tower and next to it the golden Far East Finance Centre.