Games Gamblers Play (1974), The Private Eyes (1976), The Contract (1978) and Security Unlimited (1981) – the last of which won him the first Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor – are often seen as the quintessential comedies made by the company.
Games Gamblers Play was a huge success when first released and paved the way for Cantonese movies to hold their own against the colonial trend of Mandarin production.
He would make a rare North American film appearance as the Subaru mechanic/engineer with Jackie Chan in the Burt Reynolds comedy The Cannonball Run.
Front Page (1990), which reunited the three brothers, lampoons the Hong Kong press, while The Magic Touch (1992) satirizes the Chinese obsession with fortune-telling and wealth.
Always on My Mind (1993) continues in this vein of self-deprecating humour: Hui plays the head of a family, a news anchor, who will stop at nothing to grab money.
He played a talented safe-cracker, who kidnaped a baby for money from triads but was kind-hearted and dignified, in the action-comedy Rob-B-Hood (2006), starring alongside Jackie Chan and Louis Koo.