For Chee Keong Cheung, a cinematic education came not from the local cinemas of his native Lancaster in England’s northwest, but from the neon-lit streets of Hong Kong. “I was probably a bit young to be watching them, but the John Woo films were a big inspiration. The Killer, A Better Tomorrow … had a real effect on me,” he tells the South China Morning Post over a video call. Films from the so-called “Heroic Bloodshed” era of Hong Kong action cinema, of which Woo was a key figure, lit a fire in...