“Bodies at Rest” was written as a Hollywood action thriller that Mr. Harlin says he “China-fied” in a second draft. Like “Die Hard 2,” it is a one-location action thriller about an ordinary man battling his way out of extraordinary circumstances, in this case, a doctor fighting a band of criminals trying to retrieve a bullet that incriminates them. Both movies even take place on Christmas Eve.

Mr. Harlin has written the heroic doctor as a typical Hollywood good guy: the affable rogue agent in the mold of John McClane, the “Die Hard” heartthrob who can throw quips and punches.

In one scene in which the doctor begins taunting the criminals over an intercom, Mr. Harlin wanted the hero to announce, “Attention shoppers.” It’s the kind of line Bruce Willis’s McClane would manage to deliver after a shootout, wounded but winking.

Colleagues on set told Mr. Harlin that Chinese viewers wouldn’t understand “attention shoppers,” forcing his translators to search for a replacement. Sarcasm is often lost on Chinese viewers, too. Mr. Harlin debated dropping the line altogether. Mr. Cheung, though, opted to keep it—thinking younger Chinese audiences familiar with Hollywood-style heroes will find his character cool.

“It’s like an additive flavor in this movie, that mix of East and West,” said Mr. Cheung.

Antiheroes or villains who get away with their crime are also a no-go, turning nearly every Chinese movie into a morality play.

On the set at 'Bodies at Rest.' Photo: Stefen Chow for The Wall Street Journal

Actor Richie Ren prepares for a scene. Photo: Stefen Chow for The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Cheung’s doctor cannot directly kill the main villain, as he inevitably would in most Western narratives. Having a vigilante act as a law enforcer would be morally suspect for Chinese audiences—and censors—so the bad guy dies at his own hand, giving Mr. Harlin’s hero the distance he needs to remain pure.

On set, Mr. Harlin’s Mandarin comprises mostly the count to three he yells to begin each scene: “Yi, er, san!” He relies on two translators who relay his directions to the crew and to the actors, who sometimes don’t understand each other, either.

Mr. Cheung, a widely respected actor from Hong Kong who doesn’t speak Mandarin, delivers his lines in Cantonese. Ms. Yang, a former child actor from China who doesn’t speak Cantonese, says hers in Mandarin. As is the case with most Chinese movies, the actors’ voices will be dubbed in various Chinese dialects.

It might seem like a comedy of errors, except Mr. Cheung and Ms. Yang have memorized each other’s lines so they know how to respond to dialogue in the moment. Mr. Harlin relies on intuition.

“Can I tell that they’re saying the right words? No. I am just judging their performance on the universal scale of emotions. So far in three movies I’ve never felt a problem,” he said.

The “Bodies at Rest” set is located inside soundstage No. 13 on the China Film Group campus in Huairou, a town north of Beijing newly redesignated as a moviemaking hub. Empty replicas of old-fashioned Chinese villages stand among a campus of soundstages built of gray brick.

Nearby residents live off unpaved roads, but the area surrounding the Film Group campus resembles a Las Vegas homage to Hollywood. Street lampposts are decorated like film reels. Statues of a cameraman and boom-mike operator have been erected in a courtyard. Mr. Harlin and other members of the crew live in a hotel, Cineaste, built to house the casts and crew. Its logo is an Oscar statuette.

Mr. Harlin, 58 years old and 6-feet-4, wears a black T-shirt, Nikes and several bead bracelets and heavy silver rings on set. His light-red goatee blends into his complexion and his hair is buzzed short—a departure from the blond mane he had when he attended Planet Hollywood openings in the ’90s. He is often the only Westerner on his movies.

Renny Harlin's Notable Films The director's biggest movie in China has grossed more than his biggest U.S. hit, 'Die Hard 2.' 'Skiptrace' (2016) $129 million 'Die Hard 2' (1990) $117 million 'Cliffhanger' (1993) $84 million

'Deep Blue Sea' (1999)

$74 million

'A Nightmare on Elm Street 4' (1988)

$49 million

'Cutthroat Island' (1995)

$10 million

Other Hollywood writers and directors have found work in China, and stars such as Adrien Brody and Arnold Schwarzenegger have appeared in Chinese movies American audiences will never see. No one has committed to the market like Mr. Harlin, who moved to Beijing in 2014 after his agent, Max Michael at United Talent Agency, pitched him on directing a U.S.-China co-production called “Skiptrace.” He knew “Skiptrace” wanted a Hollywood name and Mr. Harlin wouldn’t mind traveling.

In China, his client got the star treatment. “He would ask for one crane and the next day there’d be two,” said Mr. Michael.

Born in Finland, Mr. Harlin dropped out of film school and directed his first movie in 1986. “Born American,” about three American college students who cross the Russian border and ignite an international brawl, was banned by Finland after the country worried it would anger the neighboring Soviet Union.

After moving to Los Angeles, he drove around in a convertible with a torn roof until he got a job directing the hit Freddy Krueger sequel “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4.” Job offers poured in.

Mr. Harlin abandoned the convertible at a parking meter, bought a Ferrari and began a hot streak that included “Die Hard 2” and “Cliffhanger.” He married actress Geena Davis in a 1993 wedding ceremony featuring heavy security and a skywriter.

Mr. Harlin and then-wife Geena Davis during the filming of ‘Speechless’ (1994), which they co-produced. Photo: Everett Collection

“He got hit by the Hollywood crack pipe,” said Bob Shaye, the former chief executive of New Line Cinema who hired Mr. Harlin for “Elm Street” and other projects. “When you get so high so quick—and then you come down.”

In 1995, Mr. Harlin made “Cutthroat Island,” starring Ms. Davis as a pirate-ship captain on the hunt for buried treasure using a map printed on her dead father’s scalp.

“It never even had the slightest chance,” said Mr. Harlin. The studio was out of money, the distributor was selling itself and leading man Michael Douglas dropped out before filming. On set, the cast got food poisoning.

“Cutthroat Island” cost more than $65 million. It made $10 million.

The movie’s lousy performance strained his marriage, and Mr. Harlin had a child with Ms. Davis’s assistant. The couple divorced, selling their 12-acre estate for $9.5 million. Mr. Harlin continued making movies, including “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” but his career in Hollywood never fully recovered.

China's Box-Office Rise PwC analysts say China could become the No. 1 box-office market by 2021, although unpredictable economic variables in the country make forecasts difficult. China U.S. $12 billion Projections 10 8

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Mr. Harlin’s first Chinese movie, “Skiptrace,” starred Mr. Chan and “Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville as unlikely partners in a cross-country effort to bring down a mob boss known as the Matador. It grossed $129 million in the country, about equal to the U.S. grosses of Mr. Harlin’s previous six movies combined.

Suddenly, Mr. Harlin was walking red carpets again, this time at the opening of the Shanghai Film Festival, alongside Ang Lee and Chinese star Fan Bingbing. “The spark was here, like the spark I felt in the ’80s in Hollywood,” he said.

Mr. Harlin’s friends describe him as a workaholic, and his life in China is particularly monastic: Hotel gym at 4 a.m., production review before breakfast at 7 a.m., 12 hours or so on set, room service, tomorrow’s shot list, bed.

His social circle is limited to friends who visit and three women who rarely leave his side: two assistants who were educated at prestigious film schools in the U.S. and translate for him on set, and his girlfriend, Kay Huang, a Chinese native and a recent college graduate who is writing a novel from the hotel when she’s not trailing Mr. Harlin.

Ms. Huang, who met Mr. Harlin at a film festival last year in Xi’an, speaks such fluent English that Mr. Harlin jokes she’s a spy.

Mr. Harlin at a film festival in Xi'an in 2016. Photo: VCG/Getty Images

While he is filming “Bodies at Rest,” Mr. Harlin is editing “The Legend of the Ancient Sword,” a Alibaba Pictures videogame adaptation he finished directing earlier this year about a group of ragtag heroes who band together against an evil grand priest.

Unlike “Bodies at Rest,” it has an overtly Chinese aesthetic and narrative structure. Mr. Harlin tried to “Hollywood-ize” the script by giving it a more traditional three-act structure, but the movie might still seem odd to Western viewers in how it veers from mystery to grief to melodrama to slapstick in the same scene.

During a lunch break on “Bodies at Rest,” he gathered a small crew in his office to watch footage from “Ancient Sword.” Mr. Harlin’s feedback was full of Hollywood references. He wants the “Ancient Sword” cast to have a vibe similar to “Guardians of the Galaxy.” To improve the look of one monster, he suggested looking at “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” A panda’s facial movements could draw some lessons from “Kung Fu Panda.”

A longtime collaborator of Mr. Harlin’s, Tuomas Kantelinen, was also on set to preview the music he’s composed for “Ancient Sword,” a combination of orchestral swell that sounds like John Williams and the classic string and gong instruments associated with Chinese cinema.

“I don’t want it to be strictly like a Chinese score, and not just a Western adventure epic-adventure score,” explained Mr. Harlin.

The movie’s Chinese producer, Ben Zhang at Alibaba, disagrees. He wants Mr. Kantelinen to go all-in on the Hollywood sound.

“Now that we’ve heard all [the Chinese music], why don’t we try something different?” he said.

Finding a balance between the two falls to Mr. Kantelinen, who said his overall directive was to make the score more “international.” He wonders whether “international” is another word for “American”?

Mr. Harlin looks at takes for 'Bodies at Rest.' Photo: Stefen Chow for The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Harlin goes over a script. Photo: fStefen Chow for The Wall Street Journal

Hollywood movies have been America’s dominant cultural export for a century, and after “Bodies at Rest,” Mr. Harlin will help China’s own efforts to use the big screen to showcase the country. In May, he’ll start filming “Operation Somalia,” a cinematic portrayal of a Chinese special operations mission that has the support of China’s Ministry of Public Security, which is developing a slate of action movies with positive Chinese values, cinematic portrayals of the state’s own good guys in victorious missions.

“We are Chinese, but we can kick ass!” is how Mr. Harlin put it.

Beyond “Operation Somalia,” Mr. Harlin has other projects in mind, including a Chinese outer-space movie that highlights the country’s space program.

“When I see the Chinese flag in the wind, it makes me feel proud and good,” he said. “This is where I live and I want my audience to feel good about themselves and their country. It doesn’t make me anti-American. I live here. I’m patriotic about Finland. I’m patriotic about America. And I’m becoming very patriotic about China as well.”

Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com

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Appeared in the December 29, 2017, print edition as '.'