CITY ON FIRE – Shout! Review: Chow Yun-Fat Feels The Heat In Ringo Lam’s Tastemaker Crime Classic

• INTRO
• SUMMARY
• REVIEW
• EXTRAS
• CONCLUSION

Late director Ringo Lam’s filmography remains a landmark in the Hong Kong film arena for many Asian film fans, and for plenty of reasons. His tenacity, grit and style exudes through the lens and those who’ve observed him and his work first hand – a case made clear and present in the latest 4K UHD/Blu-Ray Combo release of Lam’s 1987 crime thriller, City On Fire, part of the Hong Kong Cinema Classics initiative from Shout! Studios.

And, what better way to highlight some of that aesthetic than an opening scene in which someone gets stabbed to death in the middle of a street market later swarmed by cops? Such is the case for a story that ensues with head inspector Lau (Sun Yueh) summoning his nephew, Ko Chow (Chow Yun-Fat) to join in the investigation and go undercover. There’s just one problem: Ko is already haunted by his previous assignment with the death of a suspect he befriended on the job, and his relationship with girlfriend Hung (Carrie Ng) is on the rocks.

Convinced nonetheless to take on the case, the reluctant Chow infiltrates a violent gang suspected of robbery, doing so under the pretense of selling guns to pay off a loanshark hounding him. As Chow’s initiation brings him into the circle with gang leader, Fu (Danny Lee), the move adds to another layer of troubling factors that endanger every aspect of his personal and professional life; Lau is soon forced to pair up with newly transfered Inspector Chan (Roy Cheung), who is more than eager to do whatever it takes to bring the case to a close, even if it means Chow ends up a casualty in the process. 

City On Fire moves pretty fast for a fair amount of its duration, carried by a script and a round of performances that contribute plenty to the film’s unnerving and unsettling vibe at times – something matched amply by its script and fervent production conditions in some areas. Our protagonist, Chow, is constantly on a precipice for nearly the whole duration, regardless of his options and the circumstances he’s faced with, or how they affect him one way or another.

The film does its best to keep relevant the affliction he carries in a few nightmare sequences: Shots of bloodied windows and a dead body narrated with the echoing voice of said victim excoriating Chow for betraying him is a contributing factor to his own moral convictions beyond the call of the badge (even when befriending Fu in the process of his latest case) and his obligations to Lau, who notably compartmentalizes really well between his business and familial relationship to Chow; Chow doesn’t try and curry favor apart from initially just wanting to be absolved from further undercover work. Lau doesn’t give him too much leeway either, but he nonetheless does what he can to protect his nephew from the unyielding police politics in play, mainly from Inspector Chan who insists on criminalizing him no matter what. It’s a great setup to the film’s final moments where Chan eventually gets his comeuppance.

City On Fire certainly proffers one of the best chase scenes I’ve seen in film, namely one that occurs with Chow during a second running sequence in a subway. You can bet that you’ll see Chow in a fair number of his own stunts except for maybe one, which otherwise looks amazing. The rest of the film’s action, coordinated by Joe Chi and Lee Wai-Leung, is comprised of near safety-free gun-battles and explosions on the streets of Hong Kong, and a raging gun battle in the villains’ shanty remote hut; a shot of the hut’s interior, with light shimmering through the multitude of bulletholes, is emblazoned in the background of the film’s closing credit roll, which, among other elements, casts a chilling, poetic air to the film’s cataclysmic finish.

Shout! Studios’s City On Fire comes in two discs. The first includes a 4K scan of the movie from the original camera negative, presented in Dolby Vision (HDR-10 Compatible) with and Cantonese and English DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono tracks, as well as a new audio commentary anchored by film historians Frank Djeng and F.J. DeSanto who also partnered on another collective work by 88 Films for The Project A Collection. Due to time constraints, I did not listen to the commentaries, but they’re worth a listen if you enjoy hearing key historical facts and trivia about films like City On Fire and its lasting legacy.

The commentaries and audio tracks are also available on the film’s seperate Blu-Ray which is also home to a total of four extras which also exhibit the film’s extensive, history-making impact – something that the film’s screenwriter Tommy Sham somewhat innocently glosses over in his recounting of the film and its development in the interview segment, “Burn It Down”. It’s a twenty-minute dialogue shepherded by Djeng with Sham sharing some interesting gems about the film, the reluctant role he played in the film, how he came upon being a screenwriter while working in the same circles as Karl Maka, and as Lam during his TVB tenure, and his incentive came upon writing the script. He also talks about how well respected screenwriters in other markets are compared to Hong Kong and Taiwan, which otherwise lends a stroke to the hurricanic atmosphere of Hong Kong film production, particularly City On Fire.

Author Grady Hendrix is featured in his own eleven-minute video essay, “Hong Kong Confidential,” celebrating City On Fire and its cast and crew and its winning place in history; folllwed by Ric Meyers with “Some Like It Hot,” a half-hour+ feature in which he regales the viewer with an intricate lookback on Chow Yun-Fat and his career with respect to City On Fire and the geopolitical atmosphere at the time, and much more; and by film historian Kim Newman’s “Burning Rivalries” which dives into the comparative aspects of City On Fire and Western crime flicks like Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The remainder of the disc includes an official theatrical trailer, and a 39-point photo gallery of images and posters for the film.

I’ve had access to City On Fire ever since there was still a market for VHS tapes, and it’s only this year I was able to finally see this film. I held off all these years only because I wanted to enjoy the film in its authenticity. Shout! Studios’ Cinema City acquisition marks the first time these films are being presented and restored in all their glory on Blu-Ray and 4K, and I couldn’t be more thankful to get to watch these films as they were intended: undubbed and unfettered in my experience of Hong Kong action, away from the hackneyed U.S. marketing of Hong Kong films at the turn of the century. Exhiliraring chase sequences, intense cop drama, and a brutal, bloody finale are among the ingreidients that bookend one of Lam’s finest ventures in film while at his hungriest.

City On Fire arrives on 4K UHD+Blu-Ray on August 26. Shout! Studios is a Radial Entertainment company. Visit shoutfactory.com.