Cool Rules

Actor Chow Yun-fat is indeed cool (“Hong Kong’s Coolest Export,” by RJ Smith, March 12). And it’s not the manufactured cool of the Brat Pack, nor the bruisingly boozy cool of Sean Penn, nor even the righteous cool of the saintly Sgt. Elias, the Willem Dafoe character in “Platoon.”

Chow’s cool is the classic kind: a stern, scruffy-headed bohemianism that seems as though it’s true to life both on screen and off. His performance-art background has made him perhaps the world’s most believable misfit in a long time. America will be lucky if he lands here.

Clarence B. Santos

Adelanto