City On Fire 龍虎風雲 [with Trailers]

1987 · KonCategoryIII

City On Fire and Reservoir Dogs When director Ringo Lam suddenly passed away last December, aged 63, filmmakers and cinephiles mourned the loss of one of Hong Kong cinema’s great masters. A key maker of thrillers in the 1980s and ‘90s, and with his most recent finished work, Sky on Fire , having hit screens in 2016, Lam had been renowned for his uncompromising take on crime and prison tales as well as his exacting standards on the set. Major works by Lam had become canonical by the early 1990s, when a new wave of interest in Hong Kong cinema exploded internationally, and his obituaries named the highlights, not least among them City on Fire (1987). And with mention of that landmark film came comment on one particular aspect of Lam’s influence: the famed link between City on Fire and Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 debut feature Reservoir Dogs . Lam arrived at City on Fire after taking a big step up in his filmmaking career. Having started out as an actor and then assistant director in TV, Lam became a director for the small screen in 1976. Two years later, he moved to Toronto to study film in York University before returning in 1982. Lam soon became a key talent at Cinema City, a film company churning out hits across genres and supporting rising talents. He made his directorial debut with the ghost romance Esprit d’Amour (1983) and later hit big with the action comedy Aces Go Places IV (1986). But Cinema City co-founder Karl Maka suspected such lighter fare wasn’t really Lam’s thing, and gave the director a free hand for his next work, albeit on a modest budget. The result was City on Fire , with Lam gunning for grittiness in a story inspired by a local jewellery store heist. Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee head the cast – Chow playing undercover cop Ko Chow and Lee handling the role of Tiger, a toughie high up in the gang of thieves Ko infiltrates. The robbers are first seen as they raid a jewellery factory, and the police response runs two ways. Veteran inspector Lau (Sun Yueh) secretly sends in his friend Ko – already deep undercover following an earlier operation – as his mole, while a young hotshot cop (Roy Cheung) has his plainclothes officers pound the streets (and inevitably get on Ko’s trail). As the gang prepares for an audacious jewellery heist, Ko and Tiger develop a bond despite Ko’s painful memories of selling out a previous underworld partner and the immense peril he faces. Action scenes in City on Fire are fierce affairs, from chaotic robberies to car stunts to bloody gun battles. But the heart of the picture sits in its human relationships. Ko Chow is torn not only in a growing friendship with Tiger, but also in his loyalty to Lau (after all, he wants out of being undercover) and in his relationship with girlfriend Hung (Carrie Ng), whom he worries could end up a widow. Quentin Tarantino puts aside such emotional depth in Reservoir Dogs and, surprisingly for a heist film, there isn’t even a robbery scene – just its lead-up and the bloody aftermath. The story sees a gang of six brought together and prepped for a Los Angeles jewellery store robbery. Despite tight plans, the caper falls apart and surviving gang members flee for a mortician’s warehouse to regroup. First to arrive are veteran Mr White (Harvey Keitel) and heavily bleeding Mr Orange (Tim Roth), followed by Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi) and mad dog Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen), who brings with him a captured cop. It’s clear there’s a rat in the ranks, and gang members want to know just who it is. Premiered in Sundance, then shown in Cannes, Reservoir Dogs won acclaim for Tarantino’s fresh approach to crime, its nimble time-shifting and its sharp, hip and almost incessant chatter, heavy on cool quips and popcult references. But admirers of City on Fire saw more than a passing resemblance to Lam’s film. For starters, both films zero in on the pairing of a mole and a thief, with the cop coursing through moral grey areas along the way. Many plot details are echoed too: In each film a gang is hired by a mastermind to hit a jewellery store and the men carry fake names, and in both cases the well-planned robbery goes wrong when an alarm goes off and a hot-headed robber opens fire. Plus, each time the cops have been tipped off and are waiting to pounce. (In City on Fire , the robbery and its getaway play out in brutal detail; for Reservoir Dogs , the heist is simply described.) Surviving thieves in both movies make messy escapes, in both cases with a hoodlum at one point firing with two guns through a police car windshield, and in each film the undercover cop shoots from the gang’s side (Ko opens fire on a policeman; his Dogs counterpart guns down a woman to commandeer her car). Once clear of the crime scenes, they all head for warehouses, where speculation mounts over why the cops were waiting and just who is the mole. The two films see tension peak when the bosses walk into the warehouses and Mexican standoffs ensue, and in each finale the undercover cop an