The ascent of Mann
Byron Mann on his ‘love letter to Hong Kong’, playing an egocentric partying playboy in The Modelizer.
“THERE’S A WHOLE WORLD – A BUBBLE – OF FOREIGN MODELS IN HONG KONG AND THESE WEALTHY CHINESE TYCOONS OR TYCOONS’ KIDS WHO FROLIC WITH THEM.”
You saw him fight the bad fight as a pulverising, punching, fire-raising triad boss in 2019’s Netflix supernatural thriller series
Wu Assassins. You marvelled at his bigscreen bravado when he one-upped Jason Bourne as a microchip-modified superagent in Dark Asset (2023); channelled his inner Bruce Lee in Jean-Claude Van Damme knuckle-cracker Street Fighter
(1994); and, most courageously of all, led a feudal Chinese warrior clan while making a 1980s headband look cool in
The Man with the Iron Fists (2012).
But now, expect a different kind of action as the Mann of the moment comes home: the between-the-sheets kind of action, prefaced by fast cars, faster girls, exclusive nightclubs and champagne tsunamis in overpriced hotel suites.
Yes, it’s Byron Mann as unapologetic Lothario and vain, entitled playboy in the film he calls his “love letter to Hong Kong”.
Speaking on video from his Los Angeles home, he reveals how his current release, The Modelizer (a passion project in more ways than one), came about.
“I have a deep love of Hong Kong. And I made this movie for Hong Kong,” says its screenwriter-star. “I was born and lived there until I was 18. Then I would go back every year for months on end, just because I liked living there.
“I was born and raised in Kowloon Tong,” he says – but doesn’t expand on his sporting prowess until pushed. “I played tennis – still do – and yes, at 16 I was ranked No 2 in Hong Kong. But that was a long time ago.”
Mann also brushes off his martial arts skills as “just basic stuff”, saying he practises his wushu when he must. “Here’s the thing,” he explains. “Of the very well-known Hong Kong [action] directors, like Tony Ching Siu-tung, Corey Yuen Kwai, Sammo Hung and today, Donnie Yen, I’ve worked with two or three. Every time I do I train for three or four months before we start shooting – I train with their boys, their lieutenants, wushu champions. That’s where I learned my wushu.”
But it’s a whole other type of fall Mann takes in The Modelizer. As heir to a property development fortune, he is feckless, hedonistic charmer Shawn Koo, whose job, apparently, is to wear the latest foreign model on his arm. Until he meets one who commandeers his frivolous heart and threatens to change his egocentric ways.
“We’re definitely poking fun at ourselves with these characters,” he says. “A lot of people watch the film and assume I actually come from that world: that I grew up with models, hung out with models, went to [nightclub] Dragon-i. I gotta tell you something: before we made this film I’d never, ever been inside Dragon-i. I didn’t know a single model in Hong Kong!” he protests.
Byron Mann, then, is avowedly not Shawn Koo. So where did the idea for the film come from?
“The director of photography went to Hong Kong – Christmas 2018 – came back to LA and said, ‘Hey, I love Hong Kong, I want to shoot a movie there with you.’ I said, ‘Great! Why don’t you send me a script?’
“‘I don’t have a script, I don’t even have a story,’ he said. ‘I just want to shoot there.’
“Then he asked me if I had a story. I said I would think about it, but that I didn’t want to do the usual kung fu, martial arts, cops and robbers.
“I said, ‘I do know one guy who told me he dates a different foreign model every week. Let me talk to him.’
“So I flew back to Hong Kong and he and I had dinner at Jimmy’s Kitchen in Central. I asked him to tell me about that world. He started showing me all the photos of his model girlfriends on his iPhone. It was stunning.
“That started my journey of understanding,” says Mann, “of, wow, there’s a whole world – a bubble – of foreign models in Hong Kong and these wealthy Chinese tycoons or tycoons’ kids who frolic with them. It’s an outrageous world unto itself. And I found it so interesting that this was happening on Chinese soil.
“Most of the film is loosely based on things that have happened,” he says.
“The guy is one of several characters I came across who make up Shawn Koo. So when I got around to playing Shawn I knew exactly who he was.”
Ironically, thanks to distributors’ continuing logistical headaches post-pandemic, The Modelizer, shot entirely on location, is still awaiting a Hong Kong general release, although it can be watched via Apple TV and Google Play Movies. Nevertheless, Mann is happy he has managed “to present [another] side of Hong Kong to the world”, meaning its cosmopolitanism.
“Hong Kong movies, you think of kung fu films, and that’s great – I’ve acted in them,” he says. “But as we were making it, I realised that one of the messages of this film is that Hong Kong is not just Chinese people: it’s English, Serbians, Americans, Russians, some living there for 30 years.
“What about their stories?”