grantss Ko Chow is about to resign from the police force when he is asked to take on one more case. He is to go undercover in a gang that is robbing jewellery stores. He accepts the task and successfully infiltrates the gang. It is a very dangerous mission, not just because the gang might discover his true identity but because many of the police suspect he may well be a criminal.The movie that inspired Tarantino's superb Reservoir Dogs, and, as it turns out, that's the only possible reason to watch City On Fire. Quite mediocre: random, padded script that only really finds a focus towards the end. Poor direction and performances, resulting in some pretty cringeworthy scenes. The domestic stuff involving Chow Yun Fat, and anything where he is around a woman, is very embarrassing. Hammy acting, by just about everyone concerned, throughout. Don't model your mannerisms on Charlie Chaplin when you're doing drama...Worst of all, it bares very resemblance to Reservoir Dogs. Only in the last 15 minutes or so can you see where Tarantino got the idea for Reservoir Dogs from, and even then the similarities are only in the broader plot development. Ending is not anywhere near as powerful as Reservoir Dogs and the general tone is not anywhere near as gritty.Quite poor and not worth watching, even if you are a Reservoir Dogs fan.

david-sarkies At first I thought that this movie was a little slow, but the problem was that the recording was quite bad, so it pulled the quality of this movie down. It is quite slow in parts and is very different from the namesake Prison on Fire. Where as Prison on Fire is an action film, City on Fire is a thriller. The dark setting, the jazz background music, gives the feel of New Orleans, and the movie come across as Film Noir.An undercover cop is killed in a jewel heist and another deep undercover cop is asked to infiltrate the gang and help the police stop them. The cop, unfortunately, already betrayed somebody that he was watching. He had built a deep relationship with this person, but he had to betray him because it was his job. As such he has decided against continuing as a police officer. Unfortunately his supervisor does not want him to resign yet and convinces him to go on one more assignment.This movie is a cops and robbers movie with a twist. With the robbers it is one last job and that is it, but the big job always fails and ends up dead. In this film, the robbers know that there is never going to be any last job, they are going to be doing it until they die. Instead it is the police officer who goes on that last job.As usual the police officer is struggling with his relationships. Instead of him wanting to do his job, he would rather leave his job and spend time with the woman that he loves. He continues chasing her during the movie but if his job does not interrupt their relationship, his family does. He is also under pressure from the other police departments who either do not realise or do not care that he is an undercover cop. Rather they think that he is corrupt and want to deal with him appropriately.Though he tries to pull out of the scene and settle down, he keeps on being dragged back in. This is his fatal flaw, the fact that he lives a double life, a life that is dangerous if others discover this double feature. If the criminals discover that he is a cop then he is likely to be killed.There are a number of interesting ideas in the movie. One is that the criminal knows that he will always be a criminal. The more money he gets the more he will spend and the sooner he will need to commit another crime. One criminal claims that he does not hate cops because it is their job to go after people like him. As such he will not hate the police officer for his job, but rather treat him as another working man. He earns his living by robbing jewelry stores while the police officer earns his living by arresting criminals.City on Fire is a dark, tragic movie that looks at the pain of the life of an undercover cop. Here the life is not glorified, but rather dirt real. It is a style that I wish to be influenced by because of the stark reality that the film portrays. A stark reality that people hide behind the illusion of television, and a reality that is broken open in movies like the Truman Show and Edward Scissorhands.

dbborroughs This is the film that was supposed to have been ripped off by Quentin Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs, though to be fair now having seen the film Tarantino's film is essentially an expansion of the final fifteen minutes to half an hour of the film.The plot here concerns Chow Yun Fat who is a cop working undercover. When another cop longer under cover is stabbed to death while on the trail of a bunch of Jewel thieves, Chow is forced to infiltrate the gang. We watch as Chows personal life implodes, and how other groups of cops want to use him for their own ends, especially if it means they can get a big bust out of it. Much bleaker than Tarantino's film the notions of loyalty and betrayal are especially strained and tested here, with the twists and turns having more weight. I like the film in its gritty hard edged Hong Kong way, but at the same time I think I'd prefer to re-watch Tarantino's film. This isn't to say this is a bad movie, its not, its just a different one.) (A note: the version I saw was the dubbed American version (it was what was run on cable). This essentially means that the entire soundtrack was removed and completely redone-want proof look at the long scroll of new music additions that runs at the end. I can't, at this point say how much was altered from original Hong Kong version. This means my feelings may change if I see the subtitled original version)

b00st I'm gonna try to keep my comments relatively brief, this is a huge point I'm trying to come across with) and direct them at the issue of Quentin Tarantino's (with Avary) Reservoir Dogs, not at my opinion that City on Fire stands as great film of noteable orginality.This is about a relationship which exists, between two films by different directors from different backgrounds, solely because Tarantino 'borrowed' ideas from Ringo Lam.After seeing Reservoir Dogs for the first time many years ago, I was blown away. You have to give it to Tarantino, he was in the right place at the right time and Reservoir Dogs blew everything that was going on in American cinema, at the time, out of the water. There is no denying that through film enthusiasts who saw Pulp Fiction and then later sought out Dogs, that a whole new generation of directors and writers came out of the wood work, inspired by his work and tried to imitate what they came to praise as an icon of cinematic originality in what would be come a pop culture of new wave gangster films.However, that is where, in my opinion, praise of Tarantino should stop. Sometimes I think people get confused between two things. Those two things are being a obsessive film enthusiast and being an original artist. I think that one problem, in my opinion (although many may not agree), with the general film watching public and many producers, is that they have not been exposed to much of foreign cinema, let alone most of the independent films which gain huge followings but go unnoticed by the general public, and therefore someone who markets an idea properly, be it original or not, can get away with taking someone else's idea which was truly original, but not immensly popular, and turning that into success, or even in some cases, a cult film. The latter evokes some laughter on my part, because having a cult film being based on the original work of another cult film, really says something about the audience who follows such an unoriginal film without trying to truly discover its roots.Now, does this take anything away from Reservoir Dogs or City on Fire for that matter? No. I believe that generally most who will see either film will, and should for that matter, go on to enjoy both films to the extent that they are impressioned by them for their originality and substance without caring about these 'minor details'.However, after seeing both films and actually taking them for their worth, I believe that it is clear in what classes, either enthusiast or artist, to put Lam and Tarantino in.