Foreign Filmmakers Who Had an Unforgettable Effect on American Cinema

It was recently announced that Chan-wook Park, the South Korean director of "Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance," "Oldboy," and "Lady Vengeance," will be filming his first English-language movie, "Stoker." The question is, will his movies be as powerful in English?

The results of foreign directors making English-language movies vary from director to director, regardless of where they're from.

The following directors have made a sizable impact on American cinema. Whether or not they still make English-language films, these three have managed to make movies that brought their unique style of filmmaking across oceans.

Paul Verhoeven

The Dutch director had already made a sizable impact in The Netherlands with films such as "Turkish Delight," "Soldier of Orange," and "The Fourth Man." They were very explicit in their frank portrayal of sex and violence. Verhoeven moved to Hollywood, and he made his presence known the 1987 action film "Robocop." An extremely violent film, the movie is also embedded with religious imagery and turned out to be a stinging satire of corporate America. Paul Verhoeven would go on to explore similar themes in his other American movies, such as "Total Recall" and "Basic Instinct," which elevated certain genres into something more memorable. Twenty years after "Robocop," he returned to The Netherlands to make one of his best movies, "Black Book."

John Woo

Movies like "A Better Tomorrow," "The Killer," and "Hard Boiled" had already made John Woo a big favorite of movie fans all over the world. His stylized action felt exhilarating in a way most action movies today only dream of being. The Hong Kong director had a bumpy road into Hollywood when the studios restricted his creative control on "Hard Target" and "Broken Arrow," but he did succeed in making the typical Jean Claude Van Damme flick seem anything but forgettable. Woo hit his critical and commercial peak in America with "Face/Off," which had John Travolta and Nicolas Cage playing enemies who take on each other's personal appearance. With his best American movies, he still managed to capture a beautiful ballet of slow motion violence that many copied but have never equaled. Years later, he went back to China to film his epic masterpiece "Red Cliff."

Ang Lee

The Taiwanese filmmaker received critical acclaim early on for his movies on the struggles faced in relationships with "Pushing Hands," "The Wedding Banquet," and "Eat Drink Man Woman." His success in America is even more significant as he has gone from genre to genre with seeming ease. From the elegance of Jane Austen with "Sense and Sensibility," looking at 1970s suburban America in "The Ice Storm," bringing family dysfunction to the comic book world with "Hulk," and looking at love torn apart by societal conventions in "Brokeback Mountain," Ang Lee proved that he can make just about any kind of movie presented to him. While many directors can be easily pigeonholed, he will never be.