dbborroughs
A Hong Kong action film about a wanted fugitive who is to be extradited who is released and chased by the police. I've been watching a good number of Chinese martial arts and police action films lately and to be honest most of them have blended together. Most of the films simply copy from each other in a weird daisy chain of generic action. This is a film that is different enough that I know I will actually remember it a week or three down the road. This has some wild action and several good scenes you're not likely to see else where including what has to be a unique way to remove a bullet- have the injured person be distracted by having sex. Its a trip. Worth a look if you run across it.
gridoon2018
There is nothing in "Cheetah on Fire" that you haven't seen many times before (except for a bullet-removal during sex, perhaps!); the "attack on the villain's jungle camp" part that takes up the last 30 minutes or so has been done so many times it could evolve into a genre of its own. Script and production-wise, "Cheetah on Fire" is about on a par with a low-budget straight-to-video American action film starring, say, Dolph Lundgren; with that said, the execution does have a certain made-in-Hong Kong energy. I particularly liked the 3 women in the film: Cheung Man, Fujimi Nadeki, and Carrie Ng. They are all strong, fearless, and equal to the men in both giving and taking hits. Cheung Man, in particular, makes a great action heroine and it is unfortunate that she is written out of the second part of the movie. I also liked (once again) Michael Woods, who looks and acts like a comic-book creation (you could call him "The Black Hulk"). On the other hand, Donnie Yen fans will probably be disappointed, since he has very few fight scenes, the last of which (against Gordon Liu) is so often intercut with action happening elsewhere that there is no flow to it. (**1/2)
Don Bendell
"At first, I was a bit surprised at the cast list of this movie. But, of course, Cheetah on Fire was made during the early '90s, where there seemed to be an overabundance of talent, but not enough quality producers, directors or scriptwriters to work with them. Granted, none of the cast (with perhaps the exception of Gordon Liu) are really "A-list" stars, but if you were looking to make an action movie, you could do much worse than the actors assembled here.Which makes the results of Cheetah on Fire a bit disappointing. There is a good deal of action, but it lacks that certain something -- that extra punch -- to set it above other similar films. The action is staged and shot well, and there could have been some classic stuff (such as when Donnie Yen takes on Ken Lo, and then later when he fights Gordon Liu) but it all falls a bit flat. What makes matters worse is that the exposition in Cheetah on Fire is fairly poor.The direction is workman-like at best, and that make the plodding script seem all the worse. When we're supposed to develop sympathy for the characters and care when they are hurt, but all that happens is boredom or laughter, something fell apart in the execution -- much like Cheetah on Fire as a whole. It's not a bad movie. In fact, I had a pretty good time with it because of the abundance of action. It's just that I had fairly high expectations and they were not met. Cheetah on Fire does a good job for a low-budget action movie, but don't expect much more than some decent action sequences."
Brian Camp
CHEETAH ON FIRE (1992) is a by-the-numbers thriller about government agents tracking down an errant arms dealer, culminating in a raid on the arms dealer's outpost in the southeast Asian jungle. The action is mostly gunplay but is enlivened by some solid kung fu action performed by hero Donnie Yen and a quartet of memorable villains led by Gordon Liu and including Ken Lo and western martial artists Michael Woods and John Salvitti. The highlight is a fight between Donnie and Gordon (of MASTER KILLER fame and tons of old-school kung fu films), representing two generations of kung fu stars. Also on hand are Carrie Ng and Cheung Man, who are very good at looking pretty, but not so good at fighting. (Carrie's red lipstick lights up the jungle in every scene she's in.) Donnie Yen plays an American, which prompts the others on his team to call him `Foreigner,' one of the few times his actual nationality is acknowledged in a Hong Kong film.
AD
