DIRECTOR: Ringo Lam
PRODUCERS: Karl Maka, Ringo Lam
PRODUCTION CO: Cinema City
SCREENPLAY: Tommy Sham, from a story by Ringo Lam
PHOTOGRAPHY: Andrew Lau
EDITOR: Wong Ming-lam
MUSIC: Teddy Robin Kwan
WITH: Chow Yun-fat (Ko Chow), Danny Lee (Fu), Sun Yueh (Inspector Lau/Uncle Kung), Carrie Ng (Hung), Roy Cheung (Inspector John Chan)

REVIEW

“One of the seminal works of the heroic bloodshed genre, Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, released just six months after John Woo’s blockbuster A Better Tomorrow, cemented Chow Yun-fat as an action superstar and famously afforded Quentin Tarantino the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs. Lam’s own inspiration—the 1984 heist of the Time Watch Company, which culminated in a police shoot-out — is indicative of the film’s more grounded, world-mirroring designs when compared to the almost mythical register of Woo’s crime picture. Shot on the neon-canopied streets of Hong Kong and set to a sultry saxophone score, the film follows deep-cover cop Ko Chow (Chow) as he infiltrates a syndicate of jewelry thieves while being hunted by an inspector oblivious to the sting operation. Danny Lee plays the gangster loyal to Chow, an echo of a former associate the informant betrayed.”

– The Cinematheque

“The quintessential undercover-cop/heist movie. Director Ringo Lam eschews the slo-mo John Woo cliches to deliver a film full of brutal realism, and a career-high performance from star Chow Yun-fat.”

​– Kim Newman, Empire

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Canterbury   
Monday, 23 February, 7.00pm​

Wellington   
Monday, 02 March, 6.00pm​

Wellington   
Monday, 02 March, 8.30pm​

Palmerston North   
Wednesday, 11 March, 6.00pm​

Auckland   
Monday, 20 April, 6.15pm 

Hamilton   
Monday, 15 June, 6.30pm​

Queenstown   
Monday, 21 July 8.00pm 

​Whanganui   
Monday, 10 August, 7.00pm

Dunedin   
Monday, 14 October, 6.30pm

Bigger Picture Ōamaru   
Tuesday, 27 October, 7.00pm

HONG KONG CLASSICS >>