City on Fire (1987)
[director Ringo Lam]
Color 106 min
This film was the first project director Ringo Lam took on in which he had real control over his subject matter. It was also the first masterpiece of Ringo Lam’s career (increasingly of late it must be seen as one of many such masterpieces). It also features one of Chow Yun-Fat’s best performances, a complex part which Chow brings off with unprecedented gusto. Chow in turn seems to energize the other actors, especially Danny Lee (playing the reverse of the roles they would later take in John Woo’s classic, The Killer), who plays off Chow’s energy to create the single most subtle character in his entire career. And, wet-behind-the-ears though she must have been, Carrie Ng plays her part without ever letting us know it was her first film role. She is rather perfect as Chow’s long-suffering girlfriend.
On top of all of this, it’s a great suspense film, in turns mournful and joyful and adrenaline-punched. Chow plays an undercover cop with way too much going on in his life. He’s got to a boss who’s hounding him to nail some heavily-armed robbers on their next score at the same time that a newly-formed department of the police force (headed by the youthful Roy Cheung) wants to get him on arms-trading charges. It’s all part of his undercover ruse, but to keep it up, Chow has to dodge the new cops and ingratiate himself with the criminals, eventually becoming part of their gang. As the robbery starts to come together, Chow becomes friends with the honorable thug of the bunch (Danny Lee’s part). And then Chow’s girlfriend wants him to commit to marriage or she’ll fly off to Hawaii with a rich businessman. Chow feels loyal to his boss, but really, how hard can it get? He has friends everywhere, and he can’t be loyal to them all! In a word, he’s screwed.
The film is full of masterfull scenes, with an especially exemplary chase sequence in which Chow has to lose police pursuing him while he picks up guns to trade with the robbers, and time it all so that he can meet his girlfriend at the marriage license office. Ringo packs the suspense thickly, and produces the first in a long line of great films to demonstrate his unique gift for film language.
Many critics and twice as many fans have compared the plot of this film to Quentin Tarantino’s later Reservoir Dogs. There’s even a movie, called What’s the Difference?, in which some smirking young filmmaker juxtaposes scenes from each movie to show what they have in common. Well, a little part of this film seems to be the basis for Reservoir Dogs, but the two films are hardly clones. In fact, they are really about different subjects, and their respective tones are completely different, as well as the large part of each film’s plot. Apples and oranges? They’re both fruits, all right, but the one looks, tastes, and feels totally different than the other.
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