The best Richie Jen’s drama movies

A self-styled accident choreographer, the Brain is a professional hitman who kills his victims by trapping them in well crafted accidents that look like unfortunate mishaps. When the team's next assignment goes disastrously wrong, Brain begins to suspect that someone else has planned an ‘accident’ on them.

When an ambulatory TV news unit live broadcasts the embarrassing defeat of a police battalion by five bank robbers in a ballistic showdown, the credibility of the police force drops to a nadir. While on a separate investigation in a run-down building, detective Cheung discovers the hideout of the robbers. Cheung and his men have also entered the building, getting ready to take their foes out any minute. Meanwhile, in order to beat the media at its own game, Inspector Rebecca decides to turn the stakeout into a breaking news show.

Agent Lam (Tony Leung) sets out to track a pair of plates used to make fake American dollars. When he discovers the plates, they are conned out of him by enigmatic US Embassy workers Owen (Richie Ren) and JJ (Shu Qi). With the trail now leading to Korea, Lam sets off in hot pursuit. There, amidst the dangerous and glamorous urban landscape of Seoul, Lam finds himself confronting an underworld crime boss known as the Polar Bear, head of the biggest counterfeiting organisation in Asia.

The film is set in Hong Kong before its handover to China in 1997, when the city’s booming economy inadvertently attracts three infamous criminals from Mainland China to cross the border and make their fortune in Hong Kong. Although unknown to one another, their notoriety has bred the rumor that the triumvirate will join forces to stage a shocking heist together, so much so that the criminals themselves get wind of it and are tempted to do just that.

Wise, reflective and bittersweet, director/actor Sylvia Chang's Taipei-set triptych weaves through the lives of a 40-year-old divorcée (Chang), a thirtysomething flight attendant (Rene Liu) and an aspiring pop singer (Angelica Lee). Co-written by the three principals, the script's meditations on love, friendship and life choices are as thoughtful and intriguing as the performances are unforced.

After her father died, a Hong Kong girl discovers she has two hitherto unknown sisters, one in Taiwan and one in China. To settle her father's debt, she must reunite with them to run the family's hot pot restaurant.

Weaving two stories set 30 years apart, First of May is about a middle-aged man looking back at his teenage years, dreaming of his first and possibly only love. At the center of the drama is Bai, a 17-year-old student living with her single mother Wong Lei, and her grandmother. Bai gradually falls for her admirer/stalker Yeh, who is always walking behind her and her best friend Wen Wen wherever they go.

A young man, blind and dumb, works as an audio tape typist in a hospital and fostering a tender and sincere relationship with a beautiful but introverted nurse. When hit by a car, he is the sixty billionth human being to die on earth, and is on transit to Polaris, en route to a yet more sophisticated form of existence in Vega. Given a reprieve of five days and a chance to be reunited with his love on earth, he cannot reveal his true identity behind the temporary facade he must present to her. Both boy and girl eventually learn, through a tangle of difficult and miraculous events, how love and good things always find ways of creeping into people's lives when people are not greedy and least expect these blessings.

Foreign - A child dying of leukemia needs a bone marrow transplant immediately. With only 24 hours, the doctors must fight the usual red tape bureaucracy and political obstacles in order to retrieve the marrow and carry out the transplant before time runs out.

Heung, a fishwerwoman, is determined to help Kai, an amateur aromatherapist, find the ultimate elixir for the princess who has a bad case of body odour. Although Kai's initial aim is to find the cure and win the princess' heart, he and Heung draw closer every day in the quest for the ultimate cure.

Introverted Weichung has been married to Feng for nine years. They have one son together, and Feng would like to have another child with him. One day Stephen, an old friend who now organises weddings, appears and encourages Weichung to return to the gay life he had previously. Anxious not to lose his wife, Weichung tentatively begins seeing a flight attendant behind Feng’s back.

Mi, a propane delivery girl, declares to the heavens that she must marry a rich man. On a flight to Milan Me meets Christmas, a cute, rich Hong Kong resident who immediately takes a shine to Mi. She thinks she’s hit the jackpot, but as soon as they land the two are pick-pocketed by a local. Undaunted, they go on a “poor man’s date” making the run of Milan without a penny. And the two get along famously, leading Me to the conclusion that her cynical gold-digging plans have worked.

A satirical comedy about a country bumpkin who goes to the big city, and ends up teaching the cynical city folk a few lessons about basic human decency. The hero leaves home for the first time to go to Shanghai, to collect his lottery prize - a brand new apartment. However, when he arrives, he is told by the developers that his apartment block will take a year and a half to complete. He decides to find a job in Shanghai and wait for his apartment to materialise...