CITY ON FIRE

Chow Yun-fat plays a cop who’s gone so deep undercover that only his boss knows he’s a cop in Ringo Lam's classic CITY ON FIRE. A bunch of ruthless strong-arm bandits have been ripping off jewelry stores and Chow gets a chance: break up the job they have planned for Christmas and he can come in from the cold. Chow reluctantly agrees but winds up discovering that he’s got more in common with the gang foreman, played by Danny Lee, than his own bosses.

"From the wailing of Teddy Robin's sax to the blues and neon reds of a Hong Kong where all the jewelry stores are open 24 hours to Chow Yun-fat looking impossibly cool wearing two button-down shirts, one on top of the other, collar popped like a superstar, CITY ON FIRE is everything. John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW opened the door, but Ringo Lam codified the ethos and the aesthetic of heroic bloodshed, twisting Woo's tale of brotherly tragedy into wrenching, grotesque assaults on a degenerating state and social order in the interregnum between the Joint Declaration and the Handover. Lam is the most tactile director of his generation: his gunfights inflict horrifying physical consequences, not elegant ballets of bullets and bodies but unexpected eruptions of blood and gore, nightmarish expressions of uncontrollable fear and passion. His montages don't dissolve to the rhythm of gorgeous pop melodies, they burrow into the streets of a chaotic city, handheld and smash-cut, scored by the primal growls of Cantonese rock n' roll." - Sean Gilman, The Chinese Cinema