The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Aberdeen Marina Club, Shum Wan

The arrival of the diamond-carrying mark (wife of Triad boss) occurs via private yacht at the local marina. We are supposed to believe this is still in Macau but actually we're back in Hong Kong and the marina in question is the one attached to the Aberdeen Marina Club. We saw something similar in Strangers afew years back where Aberdeen harbour stands in for a non-existent Macau marina location. You can see the aforementioned club in the background (lowest image) as well as the club's "tropical" pool on the left of middle image.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Ching Ping Theatre, Macau

The gang use an old, deserted theatre as their base whilst they plan the finer details of the diamond heist. This particular theatre is a rather famous one in Macau and is called the Ching (or Tsing...or Qing) Ping Theatre (清平戲院). According to wiki it was built in the 1870s as a Cantonese opera venue before being turned into a dual use (opera + film) venue in the 1920s. If the build date is correct then it is probably one of the oldest cinemas in China.

My memory is getting quite poor these days but I'm sure I have seen this venue in another film before, I just can't remember which one. 

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Rua da Felicidade, Macau

The enlarged gang arrives in Macau and is already being monitered by the police, who have set up a surveillance point on the balcony of the "San Va Hospedaria" aka the SANVA Hotel on Rua da Felicidade (previously seen on this blog in Isabella)

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Ponte Governador Nobre de Carvalho, Macau

The establishing shot for the action moving to Macau is a road level view from the Ponte Governador Nobre de Carvalho looking north towards the peninsula. The closest comparison I have is from Flatfoot in Hong Kong from the mid-70s.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - 124 Nga Tsin Wai Road, Kowloon City

The rooftop where the Korean gang are intrduced to the friend of their target was located on top of a rather cool looking building that used to stand on the corner of Lion Rock Road and Nga Tsin Wai Road in Kowloon City. It was quite a stylish building with its art-deco style balconies and Communist Star emblem (which you can see the rear of in some of the screen grabs). Sadly, it fell into - deliberate - disrepair and was demolished sometime before 2016. No doubt there is a high rise on the spot right now, but I haven't been down here for a while to check.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Tai Pak Floating Restaurant, Aberdeen Harbour

Despite the Jumbo being towed away and sunk in the middle of the pandemic, the Tai Pak is still in Aberdeen harbour and supposedly undergoing some sort of renovation and rebirth. We shall see, time will tell. It would be a shame if Aberdeen was to lose its sole remaining floating restaurant. In the meantime here it is functioning as the location where our two heist gangs, Korean and Chinese, meet up to plan their big heist of all heists. 

The first images show the Jumbo and its old kitchen unit that was attached to the back. Coincidentally, a few weeks before the Jumbo sunk, this kitchen structure also capsized and sunk in Aberdeen Harbour.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Central Pier 9, Central

The Chinese gang, led by Chen (Simon Yam), recruit a new safe cracker and meet up with her at Pier 9 on the Central harbourfront. This is the same pier that saw some filming for Something Good the following year.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Nathan Road, Mongkok

We are introduced to the Chinese gang, led by Chen (Simon Yam), as they are in the middle of a jewellery shop robbery. The location featured in the film is a "3D Gold" jewellery shop that used to be at #611 Nathan Road. The same location is currently (2024) a chemist/pharmacy shop and the 3D Gold has moved up a few doors, but given the way Hong Kong is this will probably have changed again in a year or so. In the background behind the security guards is the London Restaurant (倫敦大酒樓). 

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Hard Rock Casino, Macau

The next film to fall under the spotlight is a 2012 Korean heist caper called The Thieves (or 도둑들Dodookdeul for the phonetic Korean). It stars Kim Yoon-seok as, Macao Park, a master criminal and seeming double-crosser who recruits his old gang, along with a local Chinese one, to engineer the heist of a valuable diamond from a ruthless Chinese Triad gang boss. The film co-stars Lee Jung-jae (most famous recently for his lead role in Squid Games), Jun Ji-hyun (star of Blood: The Last Vampire) and Simon Yam as the leader of the Chinese gang, Chen.

It's a great film and well worth getting hold of if you can. It was shot in Korea, Hong Kong and Macau in 2011 and released the following year and has been on my to-get list for quite sometime. I just so happened across it at a favourite 2nd hand DVD store in Mongkok a few weeks ago.

The film starts in Korea as the gang carry out an audacious and complicated heist of a piece of artwork from the vaults of a rich but dumb collector. As the police move in they decide to up sticks and move to Hong Kong to link up with their old cohort, Macao Park, who has an offer for them.

The Hong Kong and Macau part of the film/story starts with an introduction to Macao Park as he is ejected from the tables at the Hard Rock Hotel casino in Macau.

A Small Roadside Shrine - Tai Au Mun Road

If you take the bus to the Clearwater Bay bus terminus along Tai Au Mun Road, you may or may not notice a small granite slab on the opposite side of the road with some writing on it.

These stone tablets are actually more common than you'd think and are placed along roads in Hong Kong to - sadly - mark the location of fatal traffic accidents. I know of at least two others but I am sure there are many more given the poor standard of driving and general lack of road safety awarness here from drivers and pedestrians alike.

The Magic Stone -Nancy Kwan (1966) - Town Island

A final post (for the time being at least) for The Magic Stone and it looks as though the boat wrecking scene was filmed on the north side of Town Island, in a small rocky bay looking towards an islet called Kwong Tau Pai (光頭排). The bay is south east facing and so open to the rolling waves that can come in during bad weather.

The Magic Stone - Nancy Kwan (1966) - Ninepin Islands

To be fair, a large portion of the footage in this film includes a lot of rather anonymous looking coastline, but I thought a brief glimpse of the Ninepin Islands was worth including. The boat was probably in the outer reaches of Port Shelter when this was taken, so not really that far from land. The Ninepins are 3 miles from the mainland of Hong Kong.

The Magic Stone - Nancy Kwan (1966) - Lung Shuen Wan Tin Hau Temple

Just up the shoreline from Tung A is the Lung Shuen Wan Tin Hau temple. This is where the wife goes to pray for her husband and discovers a lode stone that helps him and the crew to better navigate their way home.

The Magic Stone - Nancy Kwan (1966) - Tung A, High Island

The main village that features in this short film is called Tung A and is located on the east side of the bay. Many of these buildings are still around, although I haven't been out this way for more than 5 years or so. Google wont let me place the marker on anything other than a building (even when I do it snaps back when I publish), but luckily it has defaulted to one of the buildings in the top image. However, several bits of Tung A are used, including the next cluster to the south (bottom image) of this location which is about halfway to the main village site. It won't let me pin a marker there though (see location markers).

The Magic Stone - Nancy Kwan (1966) - Lung Shuen Wan, High Island

Next up is one of the films I have been trying to track down for several years, ever since I first read about it in Peter Moss' excellent autobiography No Babylon: A Hong Kong Scrapbook. In that book he describes visiting the set in a helicopter and ruining it all as the chopper's downdraft blew all the carefully arranged straw all over the place. The book also details how Nancy Kwan came to be involved in this little production despite already being a major international star: T.C Wang, head of Salon Films, was the person responsible for introducing Nancy to the producer of The World of Suzie Wong, therefore helping launch her career. So her role in this short was very much the repayment of a pesonal debt. Chaplin Chang, credited as the AD on this, also filled in some details for me and told me that T.C Wang was a very good friend of Nancy's father, Kwan Wing Hong.

Foreign film fans may or may not be aware that Salon Films - set up by T.C Wang - was the local production house that had an exlcusive license for Panavision in Hong Kong. This meant that if you came to Hong Kong and used Panavision equipment, you would have to pay Salon Films a license fee - regardless of whether or not the equipment was hired from them. After T.C Wang's death, his son Charles took over. You may recall many years ago I had a post featuring Neil MacDonald, who worked with Salon on many of the films featured on the blog. You can see that post here. Salon were involved in many of the foreign movie productions that I have covered over the years. This film is hard to categorise: is it a foreign production or a local one? Strictly speaking it could be either, but I've added it to the list of foreign/overseas productions because it was aimed at an overseas market.

After looking high and low for this film, it has suddenly popped up on the Government Record Services webpage. This makes sense because it was a Government production aimed at stimulating some tourism. Anyway, you can watch it yourself by going to this page and scrolling down to the "Videos" icon. The film is the longest of four shorts to view. No doubt this link will break at some point in the future so catch it while you can.

The premise is simple and is just a retelling of the myth of A-Mah Rock (aka 望夫石 Mong Fu Shek - looking for husband rock). Nancy plays the wife and Ling Yuen plays the fisherman husband. It's basically a silent movie with some narration.

The main filming took place in and around Lung Shuen Wan, the main bay on the south side of High Island. It has changed surprisingly little since 1966, but this is true of many remote places in Hong Kong. I'll get into specific locations in the next couple of posts - sadly this film isn't going to provide much for the blog due to the limited number of identifiable places - so to start off here are some general views of the bay area.