Johnnie To prepares film about Morris Two-Gun Cohen
- Hongkong filmmaker Johnnie To is preparing his first English-language feature and his first cinematic exploration of a Western historical figure, focusing on Morris Cohen, the adventurer widely known...
- Born Moszek Abram Miączyn in the southern region of the Russian Empire, Cohen arrived in London as an infant after his family fled the constant threat of pogroms.
- While To’s upcoming film may not strictly adhere to historical fact—given Cohen’s lifelong penchant for embellishing his own biography—his footprint in China remains a matter of record.
Hongkong filmmaker Johnnie To is preparing his first English-language feature and his first cinematic exploration of a Western historical figure, focusing on Morris Cohen, the adventurer widely known as “Two-Gun” Cohen. The project will draw inspiration from the colorful and heavily mythologized life of Cohen, a pickpocket from London’s East End who rose to become a bodyguard for Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China.
From the East End to the Chinese Republic
Born Moszek Abram Miączyn in the southern region of the Russian Empire, Cohen arrived in London as an infant after his family fled the constant threat of pogroms. Growing up in the impoverished East End, he dropped out of school and entered a life of crime as a petty pickpocket before his arrest at age 12. Police placed him in an institution funded by the Rothschild family, where he received strict discipline, studied Shakespeare, and memorized full plays—a theatrical habit that infused his later speech with dramatic flair. Authorities eventually sent Cohen to Western Canada as an agricultural laborer, but he gravitated toward the frontier towns springing up along the railway. He learned to shoot pistols and cheat at cards, surviving local court charges with his persuasive charm and spending a year in prison before serving as responsible for the cadastre. In the turbulent environment of interwar China, Cohen found his true arena, joining a wave of Western adventurers who sought fortune in a nation undergoing seismic political upheaval.
A Legacy Honored Across Divided Regimes
While To’s upcoming film may not strictly adhere to historical fact—given Cohen’s lifelong penchant for embellishing his own biography—his footprint in China remains a matter of record. When Cohen died in England in 1970, diplomats representing two bitter political rivals, the communist People’s Republic of China and the exiled Republic of China on Taiwan, paid their respects. Song Qingling, vice-president of the People’s Republic of China and widow of Sun Yat-sen, sent a floral tribute to honor her late husband’s former bodyguard, who later protected her until the outbreak of the sino-Japanese war.