In the 1940s. Xu Fugui (Ge You) is a rich man's son and compulsive gambler, who loses his family property to a man named Long'er. His behaviour also causes his long-suffering wife Jiazhen (Gong Li) to leave him, along with their daughter, Fengxia and their unborn son, Youqing.
The film takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbours. Each has a spouse who works and often leaves them alone on overtime shifts. Despite the presence of a friendly Shanghainese landlady, Mrs. Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms. Their lives continue to intersect in everyday situations: a recurring motif in this film is the loneliness of eating alone, and the film documents the leads' chance encounters, each making their individual trek to the street noodle stall.
The film, spanning years, centers on two Chinese mainlanders who migrate to Hong Kong to make a living, but end up falling in love. Leon Lai plays a naive Northerner, Li Xiao-Jun (T: 黎小軍, S: 黎小军), and Maggie Cheung plays an opportunist/entrepreneur and Cantonese speaker from Guangzhou, Li Qiao (T: 李 翹, S: 李 翘), who takes advantage of mainlanders like herself for financial gains. The loneliness of living in the big city inevitably brings the two into a passionate love affair. But their different ambitions (Li Xiao-Jun wants to bring his fiance to Hong Kong; Li Qiao wants to get rich) mean that they are unable to be together. Eventually, Li Xiao-Jun marries his fiancée, Fang Xiaoting (方小婷) (Yang) in Hong Kong and Li Qiao winds up in a relationship with a mob boss named Ouyang Pao (T: 歐陽豹, S: 欧阳豹, P: Ōuyáng Bào) (Tsang). Li Qiao also becomes a successful entrepreneur, achieving her Hong Kong dream. Despite their seemingly separate lives, however, they are still in love and they have one final tryst in the room they used to share before they are separated again.
The film comprises two different stories, told one after the other, each about a romance involving a policeman. Except for a brief moment when the first story ends and the second begins, the two stories do not interconnect. However, the three main characters from the second story each momentarily appear during the first.
Infernal Affairs focuses on a police officer named Chan Wing-yan, who goes undercover into a triad, and a triad member Lau Kin-ming, who infiltrates the Hong Kong Police Force. Each mole has been planted by the rival organisation to gain an advantage in intelligence over the other side. The more the moles become involved in their undercover lives, the more issues they have to cope with.
In the 1930s, Foshan is a hub of Southern Chinese martial arts, where various schools actively recruit disciples and compete against each other. Although the Wing Chun master Ip Man is the most skilled martial artist in Foshan, he is unassuming and keeps a low profile. As an independently wealthy man, he feels no need to accept any disciples and instead spends his days training, meeting with friends, and spending time with his family. However, his wife is often resentful of the time he spends training and discussing martial arts with friends and colleagues. Though not a professional martial artist, Ip is respected in Foshan due to the abilities he displays in friendly, closed-door competitions with local masters. Ip's reputation is further enhanced when he defeats an aggressive, rude, highly skilled Northern Chinese martial arts master, Jin Shanzhao, thus upholding the regional pride of fellow Southern stylists and others in Foshan.
A Hong Kong assassin, Ah Jong, is on his last job for the Triad (a criminal organization), but accidentally damages the eyes of a young nightclub singer named Jennie with a muzzle flash in a shootout. After the attack, Ah Jong begins to watch Jennie perform at the nightclub and escorts her home when she is attacked by thugs. Jennie and Ah Jong begin to fall in love during his frequent visits at her apartment. Driven to help her secure the money for a sight-saving corneal transplant, he accepts one final hit. A police detective, Li Ying, spots Ah Jong completing the job but the assassin escapes. The Triad leader Hay Wong Hoi double crosses Ah Jong, and instead of paying him, sends a group of hitmen to kill him. During Ah Jong's escape from the Triad, a young child is injured by a stray bullet. After dispatching the attackers, Ah Jong rushes the child to the hospital while being followed by Li and his partner Sgt. Tsang. Once the child regains consciousness at the casualty ward, Ah Jong escapes Li and Tsang.
The film depicts the Lin family's experiences during the February 28 Incident. The eldest brother Wen-heung (Sung Young Chen) is murdered by a Shanghai mafia boss, the middle brother Wen-leung (Jack Kao) suffers a traumatic brain injury in a KMT jailhouse, and the youngest brother Wen-ching (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who is both deaf and mute, hopes to flee to the mountains with his friend to fight in the anti-KMT resistance movement. By the end of the film even the photographer Wen-ching has been arrested by the authorities, leaving only his wife to tell the story of the family's destruction.
Summer Snow tells the story of the relationship between a widower with Alzheimer's disease and his daughter-in-law, May Sun, who is a housewife in her forties trying cope with the upheavals in her family. Her supportive mother-in-law has just died and her husband, who is a driving test examiner, is not giving her the support.
In a tea house in Hong Kong, Officer "Tequila" Yuen (Chow Yun-fat) and his partner Benny (Bowie Lam), attempt to arrest a group of gun smugglers while they are making a deal. After an ambush from another gang member, a fierce gun battle breaks out. The gangsters are defeated but with several police officers badly wounded, and Benny is killed. Tequila, seeking revenge, decides to kill the gangster who ambushed them, rather than arrest him. This angers his boss, Officer Superintendent Pang (Philip Chan), who wanted the gangster alive to testify. Tequila is ordered off the case.
Ho Po-wing et Lai Yiu-fai sont originaires de Hong Kong. Un jour, ils décident de partir quelque peu à l'aventure, très loin, là-bas, en Amérique du Sud. Presque à l'autre bout du monde. Ils s'aiment parfois, se querellent souvent et se quittent, irrémédiablement. Pour mieux se retrouver, et repartir à zéro, comme ils tiennent tant à se le rappeler.
In Shanghai during the 1930s, Sing and his friend Bone attempt to join the Deadly Axe Gang which ruthlessly control the city under leadership of Brother Sum. Sing seeks to restore his confidence after being humiliated as a young boy while trying to protect a mute girl from bullies, due to the failure of the Buddhist Palm method he had learned from a pamphlet he bought from beggar. Sing and Bone attempt to intimidate the residents of Pig Sty Alley but are chased off by its Landlady. Hearing of this, Sum orders Sing and Bone captured, while sending the Gang to reassert its authority from the humiliation. Three of the tenants, Coolie, Fairy, and Donut, are revealed as martial arts masters and defeat more than fifty of the Gang. Fearing retribution, the Landlady evicts the three, but they meet a pair of hired assassins using a magical guqin to launch invisible blades. Coolie is beheaded, and Fairy and Donut are mortally wounded before the Landlady and her husband the Landlord reveal that they too are martial arts masters, having gone into self-exile after the death of their son. The two defeat the assassins but Fairy and Donut die from their wounds. The Landlords temporarily evacuate the other tenants for their safety.
"My Voice, My Life" follows an unlikely group of misfit students from four Hong Kong schools cast together for a musical theater performance. From low self- esteem to blindness, each student confronts unique personal challenges in the process of developing his or her character. Teachers and administrators question whether this ragtag band will be able to work together, much less put on a successful show.
À Hong Kong, un tueur à gages désillusionné s'apprête à remplir son dernier contrat, mais il doit d'abord surmonter l'affection de sa partenaire, qu'il voit rarement. Dans une errance nocturne sordide et surréaliste, il croise le chemin d'une fille excentrique et d'un muet qui essaie sans arrêt d'attirer l'attention sur lui.
The film starts with Huo Yuanjia fighting three Westerners: a British boxer, a Belgian lancer, and a Spanish fencer. Huo defeats all three of them and has a flashback before the next fight with a Japanese fighter Anno Tanaka.