City On Fire

After a police operative is killed on the eve of busting a gang of jewel thieves, Uncle Kwong (Sun Yueh) convinces reluctant undercover cop Ko Chow (Chow Yun-Fat) to take one last assignment and help bring down the gang, who have meanwhile staged a daring robbery and killed several more policemen. Ko Chow gains the gang's confidence by selling them guns, forging a particular friendship with Fu (Danny Lee), but loses his girlfriend to a rival suitor in the process since he can't tell her about his job. At the same time, Uncle Kwong finds himself outranked by newcomer John Chan (Roy Cheung), a cocky youngster with a chip on his shoulder and a grudge against the old-timer. Chan forces Ko Chow to continue his assignment so that the gang can be caught in the act of robbery, but the cops botch their end and a gunfight ensues. The surviving gang members shoot their way free, Ko Chow taking a bullet in the process of protecting Fu. At the hideout, the gang boss accuses Ko Chow of being a cop and pulls a gun, but Fu defends him. As the cops surround the building, tempers flare, bullets fly, and soon only Ko Chow and Fu are left alive. Ko Chow admits to being a cop and then dies as the police arrest Fu.

Chow Yun-Fat deservedly won best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards for his multifaceted performance as Ko Chow. Revealing different aspects of his character to different people, he is by turns tough and cynical with Fu, almost childishly playful with his girlfriend, and sadly resigned with Uncle Kwong, whose dedication to cracking the case and bitterness at being overshadowed by an upstart kid has driven him to drink. Ko Chow is already haunted by the death of a criminal he befriended on an earlier assignment and then betrayed to the police; add to this his girlfriend leaving and Chan's police underlings first harassing and then beating him, and it's to Chow's credit that the character's perseverance is believable. He clearly understands--but is incapable of altering--the tragic trajectory that will culminate in his being shot by the police during the climactic melee, and in turn shooting one of the cops who had tortured him earlier.

Chow Yun-Fat joined Hong Kong television station TVB in 1973, taking acting classes for a year alongside Ringo Lam. Lam went on to land the lead in a series before quitting acting to become a production assistant, then producer, then TV director. Following a stint studying film in Canada, he returned to HK and was hired by Cinema City studios as a contract director for comedy films. After directing ACES GO PLACES IV, co-starring studio head Karl Maka, he was given the go-ahead to make this more personal project. A notoriously difficult and demanding director ("out of his mind" is the assessment of Chow, Lam's favorite actor; the pair worked together on three more films) with a penchant for dressing in military fatigues, Lam took his inspiration for the film from an actual event. The robbery of a jewelry store in Tsimshatsui had led to a massive gunfight in the streets, with the robbers shooting their way free before being captured later. Subsequent events proved the police had known of the robbery in advance, even videotaped it. "It was like chaos," Lam described, "the breakdown of civilization. I wanted to capture that on film."

With a moody sax score, CITY ON FIRE was shot in nighttime blues and grays and street neon by skilled cameraman Andrew Lau (later director of the influential YOUNG AND DANGEROUS gangster series). Its gritty and naturalistic ambiance recall the best 1970s American crime films and, more to the point, THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW (1984), a groundbreaking Hong Kong thriller about one of China's notorious "Big Circle" gangs--criminals who slip into the colony to commit desperate, violent crimes before disappearing back across the border. Although CITY ON FIRE doesn't make explicit its gangsters' origins, the leader purportedly speaks Cantonese with a mainland accent, and their plan is to escape HK by boat after the robbery. A brief outbreak of armed dissent amongst the criminals at the end of LONG ARM OF THE LAW is recalled by CITY ON FIRE's famous scene of the gangsters pointing guns at one another's heads--also a signature sequence in RESERVOIR DOGS.

Carrie Ng is another ex-TVB performer who played a few minor film roles before being cast as Ko Chow's girlfriend. She would later graduate to lead roles and eventually win best actress honors for her role in the brutally dark REMAINS OF A WOMAN (1993). In CITY ON FIRE she gives a typically fine performance in a problematic role. The would-be romance, ostensibly an indication of how much Ko Chow is willing to sacrifice for duty, is unconvincing and, worse, destroys the pacing of the main story. Ng's character is wholly unsympathetic and annoying, essentially telling Ko Chow that if he won't marry her this instant, she'll marry some rich creep she met at the bar where she works. Danny Lee, typecast as a dedicated, upright cop before CITY ON FIRE, was reluctant to take the role of Fu, but instills the character with an unwavering sense of honor and loyalty despite his unblinking brutality. Several times he risks his life for his compatriots, his surrogate family, while the cops squabble among themselves and stab each other in the back. It's tempting to see the film as a 1997 allegory, with the brutish but brotherly criminals representing China, and the cops, the law, the untrustworthy betrayers as England.

Danny Lee and Chow Yun-Fat had previously played cop and assassin nemeses in KILLERS TWO (1981) and would again in John Woo's THE KILLER (1989), the latter film extrapolating on the enemies/allies dichotomy of CITY ON FIRE while magnifying the melodrama. Ringo Lam, meanwhile, followed up the smash success of CITY ON FIRE with a series of bleak, violent, and intense crime stories (SCHOOL ON FIRE, PRISON ON FIRE and its sequel), many featuring his discovery, Roy Cheung, an exceptionally convincing bad guy. When the tenuously related series ran into increasing censorship and official disapproval for its grim look at society's underside, Lam moved on to less realistic, less depressing, more commercially viable fare. He has since helmed the obligatory Jean-Claude Van Damme film in Hollywood (MAXIMUM RISK, 1996) before returning to Hong Kong and more familiar cinematic territory with the downbeat thriller FULL ALERT (1997). (Graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment