City on Fire (Lung foo fung wan)

Wednesday 14 October at 7.30pm

Ringo Lam | Hong Kong | 1987 | 101 mins | R18 violence

An undercover cop infiltrates a gang planning a major jewellery heist in Ringo Lam’s blistering crimeland classic, often cited as a major influence on Tarantino.

“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 jewellery 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