Festival Hong Kong Wraps This Week With a Varied Lineup at Monica 4-Plex

The sensational second annual Festival Hong Kong concludes this week at the Monica 4-Plex, commencing with John Woo’s lively, lighthearted “Once a Thief” (Monday at 2:45, 7:30 p.m.; Tuesday at 12:30, 5, 9:45 p.m.).

This 1991 production is far less serious than the usual Woo fare, but he effectively sets off the genuine emotional ties among a trio of high-spirited art thieves with the most spectacular, patently fantastic stunts, chases and all manner of action fireworks--it’s Woo’s usual Hawksian camaraderie combined with a “Topkapi” plot.

The ever-charismatic Chow Yun-Fat, who emerges here as a major romantic comedian, the beautiful Cherie Chung and the versatile Leslie Cheung--formidable charmers also--play major art thieves on a job in France who have worked together since they were Hong Kong street kids. As amusing and ingenious as their derring-do is, what counts most is that Chung is in love with Chow, who regards their affair casually, while Cheung pines with true love for her.

The narrative is surprisingly choppy for Woo; the film virtually breaks in half when it moves from France to Hong Kong, but it regains its momentum in time for one of Woo’s most bravura finishes.

The 1980 Yuen Woo-Ping’s “Iron Monkey” (Monday at 12:30, 5:15, 10 p.m.; Tuesday at 2:45, 7:30 p.m.) is an outstanding, hearty period martial arts adventure with both humor and sentiment and set in the declining years of the decadent Manchu Dynasty.

Yu Rong-Guang stars as the noble small-city Dr. Yang, famed for administering to the poor, who carries on his charitable activities in the guise of the Iron Monkey, a masked Robin Hood-like hero who robs the rich to feed the poor, which results in futile but severe measures on the part of the authorities. Complications ensue when a wayfarer (Donnie Chen) and his small son (played by teen-aged actress Tsang See-Mun), martial arts wizards both, pass through town but once past complications, the wayfarer and the good doctor join forces in the struggle against evil.

“Security Unlimited” (Wednesday at 12:45, 5:15, 9:45 p.m.; Thursday at 3, 7:30 p.m.), which features the brothers Hui--Michael, Samuel and Ricky--in the slapstick adventures of a trio of inept security guards, is one Hong Kong comedy whose humor just doesn’t travel well. Even so, it’s possible to understand how the 1981 film, with its strong sense of what the ordinary guy must put up with just to survive, was an enormous hit on home ground.

Although it’s also easy to see how Richard Lee’s “Flirting Scholar” (Wednesday at 3, 7:30 p.m.; Thursday at 12:45, 5:15, 9:45 p.m.) became a box-office bonanza in Hong Kong, it also is not an ideal export either. That’s because it is an earthy, raucous period martial arts comedy in which so much of the humor is verbal that it seems talky when translated via subtitles.

Stephen Chiau is the Ming Dynasty hero, a man with eight wives, all of whom have turned into mah-jongg-playing harpies; he discovers true love in the beautiful chambermaid (Gong Li) of a formidable dowager (popular veteran comedian Cheng Pei-Pei). The climactic scene, in which Chiau must determine which of several dozen veiled maidens is his bride-to-be is both hilarious and inspired. The film’s greatest interest is in seeing how well Gong Li, China’s most famous and celebrated actress for her appearances in Zhang Yimou’s films, adapts to a knockabout commercial Hong Kong comedy.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

Note: In a rare departure from its policy, the Silent Movie, 611 N. Fairfax, will present at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday a 1942 talkie double feature: Fred Zinnemann’s first Hollywood film “Kid Glove Killer” (1942) and Jules Dassin’s “Affairs of Martha,” both starring Marsha Hunt, who will appear in person and autograph her book on Hollywood fashion, “The Way We Wore.” On Friday the Silent Movie will present the lively swashbuckler “The Iron Mask” (1929), the final collaboration between Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and director Allan Dwan.

Information: (213) 653-2389.