14th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 26 - Jul 11, 2015

FilmsGuestsSchedule & Tickets

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City on Fire

龍虎風雲

Between August, 1986 and February, 1987, two movies came out that kicked the Hong Kong film industry into high gear, turned Chow Yun-fat into a superstar, and revived their directors' careers. The first was the romantic, hyper-stylized gun opera, A Better Tomorrow, directed by John Woo, and the second was the gritty, socially outraged heist film, City on Fire, directed by Ringo Lam. Where Woo's movie was full of grand gestures and larger-than-life characters, Lam's film was masterfully underplayed with characters who ripped from the headlines. City on Fire is one of the most iconic and legendary Hong Kong movies of all time (so legendary that Quentin Tarantino stole the plot and certain shots for Reservoir Dogs) and it is almost never screened today.

Chow Yun-fat plays a cop who's gone so deep undercover that only his boss still knows he's a cop. A bunch of ruthless strong-arm bandits have been ripping off jewelry stores and Chow gets a chance: break up the job they have planned for Christmas, and he can come in from the cold. Chow reluctantly agrees, but winds up discovering that he's got more in common with the gang foreman, played by Danny Lee, than his own bosses.

Shot in 1986, what does City on Fire have to offer viewers in 2015? Two things. First, the performances. Danny Lee is the cool older brother everyone wishes they had, and bit parts are played by a rogue's gallery of some of Hong Kong's best character actors. But it's Chow Yun-fat's mercurial undercover cop that still delivers 20,000 watts of star power today. The other thing City on Fire offers is Lam's worldview. A precursor of The Wire, this flick shows us a city whose institutions feed on the blood of the poor. It's a passionate portrait of the little people trying to eke out a living on either side of the law, and dying for their trouble. City on Fire was released in 1987. 28 years later, that city still burns.

Director: Ringo Lam
Cast: Roy Cheung, Suen Yuet, Danny Lee, Chow Yun-fat
Languages: Cantonese with English subtitles
1987; 100 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Saturday June 27, 8:30pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

Director Ringo Lam will attend the screening.

Lifetime Achievement Award
Ringo Lam
林嶺東

One of Hong Kong's most iconic directors, Ringo Lam trained at television station TVB as an actor before realizing that he was "not as handsome as Chow Yun-fat" and becoming a producer. He went to Toronto's York University where he spent three years studying film, then returned to Hong Kong with a recommendation from his friend, director Tsui Hark, where he joined revolutionary production company, Cinema City. His first movies were all romances and comedies (Esprit D'amour, The Other Side of Gentleman, Cupid One, Aces Go Places IV, and Happy Ghost III) but after Cupid One flopped at the box office he figured his career was over. Instead, one of Cinema City's founders gave him a low budget and told him to shoot whatever he wanted. Fascinated by the robbery of the Time Watch Company, which resulted in a shootout with the police, Lam attended the trial and then made City on Fire (1987). Unsure of how to make an action movie, Lam relied on instinct, and the result was one of Hong Kong's most iconic films.

City on Fire performed well at the box office, and Lam decided to team up with Chow Yun-fat again, this time with Prison on Fire (1987) based on a script co-written with his brother, Nam Yin, who fueled their fire with tales of his underworld buddies. The movie became a massive hit with lines stretching around blocks, and Lam seemed unstoppable. But then came School on Fire (1988), a damning indictment of Hong Kong's school system and social services. The local censors refused to approve it for release unless 30 cuts were made, which Lam reluctantly executed. The hobbled movie was blasted for its pessimistic portrayal of Hong Kong, but is now considered a classic.

Scarred by the experience, Lam started experimenting with his style, making the romantic cop movie Wild Search (1989), which was a riff on Peter Weir's Witness. Then he made Full Contact (1992), teaming up once more with Chow Yun-fat. Fueled by thick licks of hardcore style, the film is, as Lam says, "just crazy enough to work" and it's become another action classic. He also made a successful Prison on Fire sequel, a martial arts movie (Burning Paradise, produced by Tsui Hark), and Maximum Risk (1996) starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. (About working in Hollywood, which he's done on two more Van Damme projects, Lam says, "They always insist on happy endings and stereotyped heroes, which are so uninteresting.")

In 1997, Lam made his last truly important movie, Full Alert, which was, as he says, not just a big action film but also his attempt "to record how Hong Kong looked before the takeover. The narrow alleys, Bird Street, Central, and Causeway Bay… Bird Street has already been demolished. Full Alert is the last film to be shot there." Although it was a box office disappointment, it was nominated for five Hong Kong Film Awards and won Best Film and Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Critic Society Awards. Lam followed it with a big budget adventure movie (The Suspect), a horror movie (The Victim), and a lighthearted caper flick (Looking for Mr. Perfect). Then, in 2003, he stopped making feature films and, except for directing a sequence of the three-part movie, Triangle (2007), with Tsui Hark and Johnnie To, he hasn't made a movie since. Until now.