# The Chef, the Actor, the Scoundrel (厨子·戏子·痞子)
**The Chef, the Actor, the Scoundrel** (厨子戏子痞子; also released under the working title *Hu Lie La*, 虎烈拉) is a 2013 Chinese action comedy directed by Guan Hu (管虎), written by Guan Hu and Dong Runnian (董润年), and starring Liu Ye (刘烨), Zhang Hanyu (张涵予), Huang Bo (黄渤), and Liang Jing (梁静). Set in Japanese-occupied Beiping during the [Second Sino-Japanese War](https://www.edgepedia.org/second-sino-japanese-war), it follows four underground agents who disguise themselves as a restaurant chef, an opera performer, a bandit, and a deranged proprietress to extract a cholera vaccine formula from Japanese prisoners.
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Chinese title / original title | 厨子戏子痞子; early working title 虎烈拉 (*Hulie La*), the Chinese transliteration of the Japanese word for cholera[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) |
| Director and writers | Guan Hu (director and co-writer) with Dong Runnian[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) |
| Principal cast | Liu Ye, Zhang Hanyu, Huang Bo, Liang Jing, Chie Tanaka[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) |
| Release | Mainland China 29 March 2013; Taiwan 8 June 2013; United States 27 June 2014; running time 108 minutes[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) |
| Box office | About 270 million yuan cumulative; Box Office Mojo records $42,970,000 from China[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) • [2](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt2645044/) |
| Production model | Main leads joined without salary and took a share of later box-office proceeds, a US independent-film style arrangement[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) |
| Audience rating | Douban 7.2/10 from 317,464 raters as of 14 September 2024[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and premise
The story is set in wartime Beijing, where a plague outbreak is linked to Japan's Unit 731 biological warfare program. A scoundrel (Huang Bo) hijacks a carriage carrying two Japanese biochemistry experts and his bodyguard into a Japanese restaurant run by a timid chef (Liu Ye) and his seemingly deranged wife (Liang Jing), where an eccentric in-house opera performer (Zhang Hanyu) also works. Deciding what to do with the captives becomes the central problem: the three men pull a gun, a knife, and a hand grenade on one another while Japanese troops sweep the city outside.[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) • [3](https://app2.atmovies.com.tw/film/fccn62645044/)
The film's premise, as summarized by [Box Office Mojo](https://www.edgepedia.org/box-office-mojo), is that four Chinese agents capture a Japanese scientist and his bodyguard and interrogate them, partly through [Chinese opera](https://www.edgepedia.org/chinese-opera), to obtain a vaccine formula during a cholera outbreak used as a biological weapon.[2](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt2645044/) Underneath the slapstick surface, the four are Yenching University graduates and underground fighters who have staged their bickering to wear down their two prisoners, a scheme the film reveals through a black-and-white flashback marked "5 Days Earlier."
The film's postscript identifies real people behind the four roles, all students at pre-war Yenching (Yanjing) University in Beijing: the "chef" was Liu Zuming (刘祖鸣, 1914–95), the "actor" Zhou Yitong (周一桐, 1909–76), the "scoundrel" Li Fangzhi (李芳之, 1913–84), and the proprietress Wu Hongying (武红英, 1912–95).[4](https://sino-cinema.com/2016/04/11/review-the-chef-the-actor-the-scoundrel/)
## Style and structure
**Genre mixing.** The film blends comic, suspense, western, and action elements, and mixes in manga, silent-film interludes, stylized violence, Beijing opera, and rock music, deliberately breaking the solemnity of conventional anti-Japanese war films.[5](https://www.lunwendata.com/thesis/2015/63497.html) The first twenty minutes play as extreme farce before the film rewinds to a serious black-and-white flashback that reframes everything the viewer has seen.[6](https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/entertainment/andy-klein/tn-gnp-dvd-review-nonsense-of-the-chef-the-actor-and-the-scoundrel-20140629-story.html)
**Structural devices.** A scholarly analysis in *China Film News* describes the film's narrative order as deliberately estranged from the story's natural chronology: it uses flashbacks and flash-forwards, including a flashback nested within another and mixed flashback–flash-forward sequences, in contrast to the straightforward linear war film it compares it with, *Hundred Regiment Offensive*. The same analysis notes its heavy use of short-lens subjective shots and split screens showing simultaneous events.[7](https://www.chinafilmnews.cn/mobile/Qnews.php?id=15966) The critic Andy Klein of the *Los Angeles Times* group compared its anything-goes comic register to the Hong Kong mo lei tau nonsense tradition of [Stephen Chow](https://www.edgepedia.org/stephen-chow), and judged the film beautifully shot and tightly edited.[6](https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/entertainment/andy-klein/tn-gnp-dvd-review-nonsense-of-the-chef-the-actor-and-the-scoundrel-20140629-story.html)
**Inn-film lineage.** The Sino-Cinema review reads the confined-space second act, in which the parties deceive one another for roughly forty minutes, as a riff on the classic Beijing Opera setpiece *Fork in the Road* (三岔口), placing the film in a lineage of Chinese "inn films" running from King Hu's (胡金铨) *Dragon Gate Inn* (1967) and *The Fate of Lee Khan* (1973) through [Tsui Hark](https://www.edgepedia.org/tsui-hark)'s *Flying Swords of Dragon Gate* (2011) and [Zhang Yimou](https://www.edgepedia.org/zhang-yimou)'s *A Simple Noodle Story* (2009).[4](https://sino-cinema.com/2016/04/11/review-the-chef-the-actor-the-scoundrel/)
## Title change
The film was originally titled *Hulie La* (虎烈拉), which is the Chinese phonetic rendering of the Japanese word for cholera and a byword for plague; director Guan Hu liked the name's force. Consumer research found that most prospective viewers did not know what the word meant, so the title was changed to the more commercial *The Chef, the Actor, the Scoundrel*. Guan Hu later said of the compromise: "It is a commercial film after all; you hawk whatever you sell."
## Reception and box office
**Commercial performance.** The film opened on 29 March 2013; its first day including midnight screenings passed 20 million yuan, overtaking the Hollywood release *Oz the Great and Powerful*, and its first three days earned 80 million yuan. It broke 100 million yuan within five days and 200 million yuan within two weeks, and it set a new personal box-office record for Guan Hu, whose earlier films *Cow* (斗牛) had earned only 14 million yuan and *[Design of Death](https://www.edgepedia.org/design-of-death)* (杀生) just over 20 million.[8](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-04-09/17553895806.shtml) • [9](https://www.yicai.com/news/2597456.html) The cumulative total reached 270 million yuan, ranking 27th on the 2013 domestic yearly chart.[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) • [10](https://yule.360.com/detail/3621111)
**Divided reviews.** Reception in the industry split sharply. Screenwriter Ning Caichuan (宁财神) called it "the ugliest domestic film of the year," which touched off a public dispute with director Gao Qunshu, who praised the film, and Xu Zheng also praised it.[8](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-04-09/17553895806.shtml) Some critics found the later plot developments exaggerated to the point of implausibility, with one [People's Daily](https://www.edgepedia.org/peoples-daily) commentary faulting the story's lack of internal logic while noting the comic energy of the four leads.[11](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-04-09/02393894972.shtml?from=wap) • [12](https://www.people.com.cn/24hour/n/2013/0402/c25408-21000053.html) Zhang Hanyu, in interviews, described the film as semi-experimental in its storytelling and said his opera-performer disguise, with half-painted face and no recognizable actual opera role, was intentionally absurd.[13](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-03-31/16453889718.shtml)
## Cast and awards context
The three male leads were each holders of a Golden Horse Award for Best Actor, a combination the film's promotional poster underlined with four golden horses representing the three leads and Guan Hu himself, who held a Golden Horse for Best Adapted Screenplay.[9](https://www.yicai.com/news/2597456.html) Liang Jing, Guan Hu's wife, won the Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actress shortly before the film and again played against her image with heavy makeup and prosthetic teeth.[10](https://yule.360.com/detail/3621111) • [11](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-04-09/02393894972.shtml?from=wap) In March 2014 Guan Hu was nominated for Annual Director at the 5th China Film Directors' Guild awards for the film.[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/)
The producer was Beijing Enlight Pictures (北京光线影业有限公司), and the film was among nine films Enlight invested in and distributed in 2013 whose combined box office exceeded 2.3 billion yuan.[1](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/) • [14](https://static.cninfo.com.cn/finalpage/2014-01-28/63530615.PDF)
## References
1. [厨子戏子痞子 The Chef，The Actor，The Scoundrel (2013), 1905电影网](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2208860/)
2. [The Chef, The Actor, The Scoundrel (2013), Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt2645044/)
3. [廚子戲子痞子, 開眼電影網](https://app2.atmovies.com.tw/film/fccn62645044/)
4. [Review: The Chef The Actor The Scoundrel (2013), Sino-Cinema](https://sino-cinema.com/2016/04/11/review-the-chef-the-actor-the-scoundrel/)
5. [论管虎电影的后现代镜像表征, 论文网](https://www.lunwendata.com/thesis/2015/63497.html)
6. [DVD Review: Nonsense is the point in 'The Chef, the Actor, and the Scoundrel', Los Angeles Times / Glendale News-Press (Andy Klein, 2014)](https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/entertainment/andy-klein/tn-gnp-dvd-review-nonsense-of-the-chef-the-actor-and-the-scoundrel-20140629-story.html)
7. [论主旋律电影的突围策略, 中国电影报 (孟丽花, 2024)](https://www.chinafilmnews.cn/mobile/Qnews.php?id=15966)
8. [电影《厨子戏子痞子》口碑争议 票房稳, 羊城晚报 via 新浪娱乐 (2013)](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-04-09/17553895806.shtml)
9. [《厨子戏子痞子》：不可能文艺到底, 第一财经日报 (2013)](https://www.yicai.com/news/2597456.html)
10. [《厨子戏子痞子》：刘烨、张涵予、黄渤，三个金马影帝一台戏, 360娱乐](https://yule.360.com/detail/3621111)
11. [《厨子戏子痞子》抗日奇侠装疯卖傻, 新浪娱乐 (2013)](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-04-09/02393894972.shtml?from=wap)
12. [观众评论《厨子戏子痞子》, 人民网 (2013)](https://www.people.com.cn/24hour/n/2013/0402/c25408-21000053.html)
13. [张涵予《厨戏痞》圆梦：我是特喜剧的人, 齐鲁晚报 via 新浪娱乐 (2013)](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2013-03-31/16453889718.shtml)
14. [光线传媒 2013 年度报告相关披露, 巨潮资讯](https://static.cninfo.com.cn/finalpage/2014-01-28/63530615.PDF)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Action comedies › Action comedies, 2000 to 2019*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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