CITY ON FIRE is a rough and ready crime thriller from celebrated Hong Kong director Ringo Lam, featuring Chow Yun Fat in another of his star-making performances. This time around, Chow is a renegade cop (of course) who finds himself embroiled in the hunt for a gang of violent jewel thieves. Eventually he's coerced into going undercover and joining the gang himself, with violent consequences.
This is a noticeably lower budgeted production than much later fare by Lam, but the rough and tumble nature of the story means it doesn't matter and in some cases the gritty, shoot-on-the-street style of filming makes it more realistic than a slicker production might have been. The various heist sequences are very well filmed, and there's a neat turn from Danny Lee as the leader of the gang; the two would later pair up to famed effect in Woo's THE KILLER. Tarantino loved this film so much he borrowed copiously from the climax for his own RESERVOIR DOGS.
This is a noticeably lower budgeted production than much later fare by Lam, but the rough and tumble nature of the story means it doesn't matter and in some cases the gritty, shoot-on-the-street style of filming makes it more realistic than a slicker production might have been. The various heist sequences are very well filmed, and there's a neat turn from Danny Lee as the leader of the gang; the two would later pair up to famed effect in Woo's THE KILLER. Tarantino loved this film so much he borrowed copiously from the climax for his own RESERVOIR DOGS.