Although Chow continued his TV success, his goal was to become a film actor. However, his occasional ventures into low-budget films were disastrous. Success finally came when he teamed up with director John Woo in the 1986 gangster action-melodrama "A Better Tomorrow", which swept the box offices in Asia and established Chow and Woo as megastars. "A Better Tomorrow" won him his first Best Actor award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It was the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong history at the time, and set a new standard for Hong Kong gangster films. Taking the opportunity, Chow quit TV entirely. With his new image from "A Better Tomorrow", he made many more 'gun fu' or 'heroic bloodshed' films, such as "A Better Tomorrow 2" (1987), "Prison on Fire", "Prison on Fire II", "The Killer" (1989), "A Better Tomorrow 3" (1990), "Hard Boiled" (1992) and "City on Fire", an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs".