Ever since its inception, the John Wick franchise has prided itself on being something akin to a much classier version of The Expendables. The big names are there, and they’re all wielding guns and kicking ass, but it’s done with much more style and panache than Sylvester Stallone’s bang of aging ass-kickers, which makes Donnie Yen’s involvement all the more fitting.
Not only did the martial arts icon turn down a role in the aforementioned series because he wasn’t sold on how his character would be portrayed – which is understandable when Jet Li literally plays a dude named Yin Yang – but he also battled with the team behind John Wick: Chapter 4 to ensure that he wasn’t hired simply to be another Asian stereotype.
It’s that confidence and willingness to stand his ground that’s established Yen as one of the greatest action heroes of the modern era, but as he admitted in an interview with GQ, he wasn’t above borrowing money from an organized crime syndicate in the late 1990s when a couple of back-to-back box office bombs saw his career hit the skids.
“From the Triads! Everybody, one way or the other, knows a Triad. I’ve been through it all. I witnessed gangsters fight on the set. I’ve witnessed all kinds of unimaginable things. There’s a lot of failure along the line. That’s part of life. We can’t be invincible. We do the best we can.”
Mercifully – and for his own safety – a resurgent Yen managed to pay off his debt to the notorious Triads, but there are plenty of people who haven’t been anywhere so lucky. These days, he’s kicking ass and taking names to a higher standard than ever, and we can’t wait to see him go toe-to-toe with Keanu Reeves when John Wick: Chapter 4 comes to theaters in a matter of weeks.
