Hollywood began to gain hegemony over the world’s movie industry as a result of the devastation Europe underwent in World War I. However, through the early 1990s, Hong Kong maintained a thriving local movie industry, both in production and exhibition. In fact, from the 1970s through the 1990s, when Hollywood was consolidating its control over most of the theaters of the world, Hong Kong actually began to expand its popularity in the West, especially in America, where certain Hong Kong directors and filmmakers enjoyed a cult following. There are various reasons for this anomaly. For one, Hong Kong’s smaller film budgets and less rationalized system of production allowed for a more spontaneous, varied, and energetic cinema, with movies that did not necessarily adhere to strict narrative formulas. In addition, lacking capital for expensive production values, Hong Kong movies featured higher levels of kinetic action, replete with action heroes capable of feats of impressive physical skill that amazed Western audiences with their real-life prowess and risk-taking. In addition, the martial-arts and “heroic bloodshed” genres used exuberant violence to mask an ethos of close camaraderie, and male homo-social bonding that had become taboo in Hollywood cinema due to the preference for go-it-alone individualistic heroism and the fear of homo-erotic displays of male physiques and masculine beauty. In this paper, these points are demonstrated through close looks at the Western reception of three different styles of popular Hong Kong action star: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Chow Yung Fat’s collaborations with the director John Woo.