Consider Anthony Wong, his face as lumpy and raw as an undercooked pancake. He was a character actor specializing in psychopaths and cannibals in Hong Kong before the territory’s transfer from British to Chinese control in 1997. But since the handover, he’s become one of the city’s best-loved actors thanks to his work as a stoic hitman in the crime drama “The Mission” and as a cop wracked with guilt over past mistakes in “Infernal Affairs.”

Or look at Lam Suet, a fat bag of potatoes with a hairy mole on his jaw who spent his pre-1997 movie career moving lights on film shoots but who, post-handover, has played everything from a tweaking mechanic in “Triangle” to a henpecked assassination broker in “One Night in Mongkok,” a big-hearted henchman in “Election,” and a pistachio-popping hired gun in “The Mission.”

Hong Kong used to manufacture movie stars — glamorous, larger-than-life heroes like Chow Yunfat and Jackie Chan — but now it crafts actors, human-size talents like Messrs. Wong and Lam, and the funny thing is, the industry is far stronger for it.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. In 1997, tanks were supposed to roll in the streets of Hong Kong, the economy was supposed to swirl down the toilet, there were going to be riots in the streets and locusts were supposed to descend and strip the flesh from the local film industry’s bones. Instead, Hong Kong’s film industry evolved, suddenly and shockingly, and you can see the results at Lincoln Center’s “10 Years and Running: Recent Hong Kong Cinema,” which begins a week-long run today.

The cause of this forced evolution wasn’t communism, but a slow-motion explosion of the film industry bubble that had already started in 1995. For decades, Hong Kong had made far more movies than its audiences could possibly consume, relying on exports to turn a profit. But when the Asian economic crisis hit in late 1997, foreign territories couldn’t cough up the cash to import Hong Kong movies, and in two years production levels dropped by almost 50%. Previously, Hong Kong had made movies at a ratio so disproportionate to its population that if Hollywood duplicated its productivity, America would be making more than 7,000 films a year. Forced to adjust downward to more reasonable levels of production, the film industry is now 75% smaller than it was 10 years ago. In order to survive, moviemakers have had to get smarter or die.

Johnnie To is the biggest post-1997 success story. During Hong Kong’s heyday, Mr. To was a journeyman director of anonymous, big-budget fare. These days he’s the city’s most famous name, and his films regularly make their premieres at Cannes. The three-part “Triangle,” making its American debut in Lincoln Center’s retrospective, puts him in the ring with two other directors who found their fame pre-handover, and Mr. To emerges the clear winner.

A noir farrago about three debt-ridden losers who wind up in possession of an invaluable golden vest, “Triangle” is a three-part film, with the opening half-hour directed by Tsui Hark, Hong Kong’s greatest director of the 1990s; the middle segment is directed by Ringo Lam, who ruled the 1980s; and the finale is directed by Mr. To. Each auteur takes his portion of the story through near-impossible twists, trying to stump the following director, and Mr. Lam’s middle segment is full of his signature high-impact vehicular mayhem. By the time he’s finished battering the plot with a minivan, you’ll think there’s no way it can possibly recover, but that just means you’ve underestimated Mr. To.

His third act is always one slim plot contrivance away from chaos, but five hidden handguns, four identical plastic shopping bags, three power blackouts, two cops, and one alligator later, the first two-thirds of the movie have been obliterated by the sheer skill on display, a kind of cinematic brio that leaves you with a smile. After refining his abilities on almost 50 films, Mr. To has become the kind of moviemaker whose craft is so highly evolved, it looks like magic. This glorification of professionalism is one of the great preoccupations of post-1997 Hong Kong cinema, and no movie extols the virtues of hard work more than Mr. To’s “The Mission.” Beloved by everyone from trigger-happy fanboys to my 70-year-old mother, its plot is simple: Someone wants to kill Boss Ko, so Boss Ko hires some bodyguards. The bodyguards in question are five of Hong Kong’s best character actors, and Mr. To’s examination of their professionalism is so intense that everything — dialogue, plot, character, music — is boiled down to a strong, astringent residue. It’s the motion picture as Zen haiku, proclaiming that outside of our work there is only darkness.

It’s in this darkness that Derek Yee stages “One Night in Mongkok,” the undiscovered masterpiece of Lincoln Center’s line-up. Starting with an argument in a Mongkok night market that escalates into a gang war, the film unfolds over one long Christmas Eve. After a hitman is brought in from the Mainland to settle some scores, a hooker latches onto him to steal his money and a band of detectives race all over town trying to keep things under control. Zooming from the sprawling to the specific, Mr. Yee builds his film out of a thousand tiny details: a handicapped snitch who wants respect, a mother who stops running so she can see her son’s killer stabbed to death, a tough cop who’s never used his gun.

“One Night in Mongkok” is the distress signal that everyone expected from post-1997 Hong Kong, only it’s being broadcast on a wider band. Before the handover, Hong Kong cinema was treated as a freaky corner of the cinematic world with its own strange customs, celebrities, and glorious excesses. But these days, smartened up and stripped down by economic necessity, its smaller scale is making for more universal movies. Hong Kong’s not in trouble, “Mongkok” proclaims, we all are. But if we’re all in trouble, who’s coming to our rescue? After the handover there are no heroes — no Chow Yun-fat, no Jackie Chan — only the little people are left. And so “Mongkok” is a prayer for a world that’s drowning in despair, made all the more poignant because the director believes that there’s no one listening, and that we’re going to have to save ourselves.