Chi Muoi Lo
Read Chi Muoi Lo's early credits in order and you get a summary of what Hollywood was offering Asian American actors around 1990. Tough #1 in Gleaming the Cube in 1989. Dope Dealer in Kindergarten Cop in 1990. Vampire in the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer film. Thai Kick Boxing Sportscaster in Hot Shots! Part Deux in 1993. Architecture Student in Indecent Proposal the same year. He is classically trained. None of that required training.
Vanishing Son changed the terms in 1994. It began as a long-form television event and continued as a syndicated series, and it gave him a starring role as Wago Chang, the only sustained part in this list. Dr. Greg Lee in The Relic in 1997 is the other credit with a name and a profession attached to it.
So he made his own. He wrote, directed and produced Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, which arrived in 2000 and picked up festival attention. One acting credit here comes after it, Tuk in Sucker Free City in 2004, and then the screen work largely stops. He has since built a business on the other side of the industry, running a management company and teaching actors the commercial mechanics that his own filmography illustrates with some precision.
Movies (7)
TV (1)
Where to start with Chi Muoi Lo
Vanishing Son is the only place to see him carry anything, and that is reason enough to seek it out. Mid-1990s syndicated action television with all the limitations that implies, but the part is a real one and he is good in it.
The Relic is the best film here, a proper studio creature feature that gives him a scientist with lines and a function rather than a costume. Sucker Free City is the interesting late one, a San Francisco crime drama with considerably more on its mind than its budget.
The rest are one-scene appearances inside films worth watching for other reasons: Kindergarten Cop, Indecent Proposal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Take them as a set and the shape of a career becomes very legible, which is its own kind of viewing. Then track down his own film as writer and director, Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, for what he does when nobody else is casting him.