Famous Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To is preparing to direct a film inspired by the life of Morris Cohen, nicknamed "the two pistols." Johnnie To, already the author of over a hundred films including works such as The Mission, PTU, and Elections, is turning his attention for the first time to a Western historical figure. This will also be his first film in English. It is not certain whether this film will respect historical truth, as Morris Cohen, sometimes called Maurice, has been known to embellish his biography, exaggerate his importance, and fabricate a legend. Morris Cohen was part of a wave of Western adventurers who found their Eden in China during the interwar period. His impact on China remains undeniable, as evidenced by the fact that diplomats from the Communist People's Republic of China and the Republic of China in exile on Taiwan paid tribute to him at his funeral in England in 1970. Song Qingling, vice-president of the People's Republic of China, sent a wreath, although she had no real power in Mao Zedong's China. Her prestige was immense as the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China. Cohen was born as Moszek Abram Miączyn in the south of the Russian Empire, in the Carpathians where the Tsars confined the Jews under the constant threat of pogroms. The Miączyn family settled in East End in London after fleeing Russia. The family did not go further than England because they had relatives in the British capital. Realizing that his Polish name was unpronounceable, Josef, the father, chose the name Cohen in memory of rabbinical ancestors. The miserable backstreets of the London port were the school of life for the boy. He skipped classes, loitered in the streets. His father tried to beat his son, but it did nothing. Theft on the floor, various thefts. The little delinquent professionalized and became a pickpocket. The stolen money satisfied his insatiable appetite for good meat that he would keep until his death. He slipped into cabarets, music halls, fairground booths and all other popular attractions. He learned boxing and, as a result, got a broken nose. At twelve years old, he was arrested. Too young to be incarcerated, the police entrusted him to the equivalent of a supervised education boarding school funded by the Rothschilds. Morris was sent to Canada, in the great prairies of the west, as an agricultural worker. The field work was not his cup of tea. A small delinquent, he fraternized with the towns that were born along the railway. He learned to shoot with a pistol, to cheat at cards, two talents very useful for surviving in the wild west where immigrants, gold and oil prospectors, a fauna often in delicate with the law, flowed. Cohen fed the judicial chronicle of the local press. He generally came out innocent from the court thanks to his formidable eloquence. But not systematically. He spent a year in prison, which did not prevent him from becoming responsible for the cadastral and cheating even more. In Saskatoon in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Morris met Mah Sam, a Chinese restaurateur who saved him from criminality. Mah Sam was not just a cook. He was the head of a secret society that plotted the overthrow of the Manchu imperial dynasty in China. Mah Sam taught Morris about the development of the Chinese revolutionary movement. Morris was accepted as a member of the organization. He was received with the greatest respect in the Chinese restaurants of the Canadian west. Being aware that as a Jew without education he would never be respected in the eyes of the Anglo-Saxons, these marks of friendship touched him. He learned about personalities little known outside Chinese circles, in particular that of doctor Sun Yat-sen. Morris, who had never pledged allegiance to anyone, made doctor Sun his hero. Morris intervened in favor of these Asian emigrants who did not speak English correctly, and read even less, during disputes with Canadians or legal disputes with authorities. When World War I broke out in 1914, Morris enlisted in the army. His military career was marked by ups and downs. Appointed sergeant, he was demoted, then promoted to corporal. He lost that rank for desertion in 1918 after he "demobilized" himself alone as he says. Back to civilian life, he went in circles. The Canadian economy was in bad shape. The "Far West" was calming down and opportunities were decreasing. He survived when Mah Sam told him that Sun Yat-sen was looking for Western bodyguards. Morris arrived in Canton. This city was the base camp of doctor Sun in view of conquering China. His salary was comfortable. He showed zeal, accompanied the leader in his travels, assisted, with his revolver clearly visible, to his interviews. The mission was not without danger. During a trip, the procession was machine-gunned. Morris was wounded in the arm. Aware that he could one day be amputated because of a bad wound, he trained to shoot with his left hand and discovered that he was ambidextrous. From then on, he carried two large Parabellum, one at the belt, the other under the armpit. He gained the nickname of "Cohen, the two pistols." The British Foreign Office initially looked down on this big guy who spoke like a London taxi driver. But the appreciation of the stuffy diplomats evolved as the events predicted by Morris were realized. Because "Cohen, the two pistols" was at the heart of power within the Kuomintang, the nationalist party. The elite gathered by Sun Yat-sen, who revolves around the three Song sisters, is Anglophone. Chiang Kai-shek who succeeded Sun Yat-sen and liquidated in 1927 the alliance with the communists is an exception. The China of the 1930s is indeed in the hands of Sino-Americans. These students of missionaries and American universities surround themselves with Anglo-Saxons or former German military men. These foreigners know a lot thanks to their proximity with the ruling circle, even if the underlying movements that shake the depths of Chinese society escape them because they do not speak, or poorly, Chinese. It remains that they are precious sources of information for Western intelligence services. The "general" Cohen has set his mind on working for a rapprochement between China and the British. These last ones were initially suspicious of Sun Yat-sen because of his anti-imperialist speeches. "Cohen the two pistols" informed the British that doctor Sun, and his successors, are determined to abolish the unequal treaties imposed on China in the 19th century and restore the full sovereignty of the country with the end of foreign concessions, but that he counts on negotiation, and not on force, to achieve this goal. Morris sees himself as a mediator, a diplomat and ... a negotiator. China, in the throes of wars of warlords, needs weapons. Morris sets out to find the surplus of World War I. He organizes an intense traffic via Hong Kong, first of infantry weapons then of military aircraft. He fixes his remuneration at 5% of the final price. Playing on his supports within the Chinese administration, he cancels the orders placed with competitors and recovers them. Having become rich, he leads a grand life and gambles in the great hotels, in Shanghai and in Hong Kong where the Chinese government rents him suites for the year. He has never had a home, always lived from one hotel to another or stayed with close friends. He holds open table, invites the political and diplomatic elite, the most prominent Chinese cinema stars, Western journalists, the honorable correspondents of intelligence services, representatives of major Western companies during banquets where the best dishes of Chinese cuisine are served. After 1937, the year of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, the British initiated a secret military cooperation with China. In Hong Kong, the British services formed a clandestine army, the Force Z. These fighters were trained by British instructors and supervised by Jewish or anti-Nazi German refugees in a camp located a few miles north of Hong Kong. The contacts were made at night, by small planes, in the greatest discretion. After the German victory in Europe in 1940, this activity intensified with the creation by Prime Minister Churchill of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to fight in the areas occupied by the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan). Up to 4,000 Chinese agents were trained and sent behind the Japanese lines to carry out espionage and sabotage actions. Morris is supposed to serve as an officer of liaison between the Hong Kong headquarters and the command of the resistance networks in occupied China, and to collect information on the deployment of Japanese troops in southern China. He is paid. The results are mediocre. The coordination with the Chinese command proves difficult due to the difficulties in communicating between Hong Kong and Chongqing, in central China, where Chiang Kai-shek and the Song family had taken refuge. In December 1941, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack Hong Kong. Morris is captured, locked up and severely beaten to make him confess the information he holds. During an interrogation, he gets angry and hits his interrogator with a right hook. Paradoxically, this boxer's reflex, which would have cost him his life, is interpreted as proof that he knows nothing. Half-dead, he is put back in the Stanley camp reserved for civilians. One of his Japanese contacts - he has some, his taste for friendship is ecumenical - sometimes sends him food. He survives by keeping his dignity without losing his joviality despite the terrible privations. He kills time by doing magic tricks with an old deck of cards to cheer up the children held. In 1943, claiming to be Canadian although he was never naturalized, he is released during a rare exchange of civilian prisoners between belligerents. Back in England, he knocks on the door of the British MI5 (equivalent of the French DGSI) which turns him down, then the Canadian internal security services who consider him a man of the past and finally the Americans who reject his offers by bringing up his judicial records in Canada before 1914. The Americans have had a poor opinion of Morris since the early 1920s. In turn, they have seen him as a swindler, the head of a drug smuggling network and, more bizarrely, a secret agent of the communists. They have refused several times to grant him a visa to travel to the United States. After 1945, Morris tries to get back on his feet. A refugee in England, he got married but the import businesses of antiques or Chinese furniture that he tried to set up failed. Short of money, he counts on China to replenish him. But the post-war period is not the 1920s and 1930s. The government of Chiang Kai-shek is at the end of its tether. Hyper-inflation ruins the country. Communists and Nationalists sharpen their swords in view of a new round of civil war. Back in Shanghai, Morris seeks out foreign companies willing to pay him. Without success! The political disorder chills commercial enthusiasm. Always available to explain China to passing visitors, he serves as a guide to Henri-Cartier Bresson who came for a reportage. The victory of Mao Zedong and the flight of Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in 1949 seems to put an end to the career of Morris. He returns to England without a penny and divorces. He supports the creation of Israel and, as in the 1920s, he lobbies Westerners to recognize Sun Yat-sen internationally while China was in the midst of a civil war. He offers himself to the new Jewish state at war with the Arabs. Again without result. He considers writing his memoirs, convinced that Hollywood, seduced by his adventures, will buy the rights to make a great film about his life. The secretary he hired is tearing her hair out trying to give coherence to his stories as they are so disjointed. In 1955, miracle! He has re-established contact with Song Qingling. The eldest of the Song sisters has not forgotten the former bodyguard and invites him to Beijing. Back in China, he struts in the corridors of the Beijing Hotel where foreign guests are confined. He believes in his renewal. He repeats endlessly that China will open up to trade with foreign countries. He hints that he is entrusted with a "good offices" mission in view of a peaceful rapprochement between the communist mainland and the nationalist island of Formosa. He makes trips to China. The regime lays the red carpet for each trip. Zhou Enlai toasts him at a banquet. It is the highest possible recognition from a top Chinese leader. This public gesture moves Morris. He helps, certainly, to conclude in 1960 the sale of aircraft and Rolls Royce engines by the United Kingdom to China after the Sino-Soviet split. It is a medium-value contract but, in his eyes, it is crucial. So much so that he is willing to give up his commission for its success. Morris does not realize that he is now only an "old friend," according to the flattering formula that the regime uses for foreigners who serve as decoys to create an illusion of normalization while China sinks into economic failures and plunges into the bloody chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Morris was not a sinologist. He never actually spoke Chinese. He was just a street kid resourceful and with inexhaustible energy who found himself a witness to immense upheavals in a country largely unknown and with a difficult to decipher future. As noted by an honorable correspondent of the Intelligence Service in a cable sent to London, Morris lacked education and instruction. However, adds this correspondent, he observed finely what he saw. "Cohen, the two pistols" added his name to the lineage of these men half-initiated, half-charlatans whose Victor Segalen draws the first portrait in René Leys, these men who found importance in Asia that they would never have had in their native country. In his way, he was a precursor of those now called "consultants," these intermediaries who, thanks to their address books, untangle some complex commercial affairs. This braggart seems to have made his own the Turkish proverb "the important thing in life is to know how to tell it." We await with impatience to see how this character, "wider than life" as the English say, will appear in this future film that Johnnie To calls a "dim sum western."