A Shout! shout-out: Ringo Lam’s classic ‘City on Fire’ rocks in 4K
- Craig Shapiro
- Sep 17
- 5 min read
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
Chow Yun-Fat’s star was on the rise when he took on the role of Ko Chow, a Hong Kong undercover cop who infiltrates a gang of jewel thieves in the gritty “City on Fire.”
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“CITY ON FIRE”
4K UHD & Blu-ray, 1987, unrated, bloody violence, mild language, brief nudity, Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
Best extra: “Burn It Down!” the new interview with screenwriter Tommy Sham
IN THEIR wide-ranging new commentary for this excellent Shout! Studios release, film historians Frank Dejeng and F.J. DeSanto talk at some length about the differences between the films of directors Ringo Lam and John Woo, contemporaries whose explosive action films were packing theaters in Hong Kong and beyond.
Where Woo (“A Better Tomorrow,” “Hard Boiled”) was elegant and operatic, Lam’s movies were more like a fist-fight: in-your-face and gritty. You don’t have to look any further than “City on Fire,” widely regarded as the best of his career.
The premise wasn’t new. An undercover cop imbeds with a gang of thieves, bonds with the leader and is torn between duty and loyalty. James Cagney’s “White Heat” (1949) is just one early example, and Quentin Tarantino fans already know that he borrowed from “City on Fire” for 1992’s “Reservoir Dogs.” For the record, those who insist that he ripped Lam off are dead wrong.
(1-3) Undercover policeman Chan Kam-Wah (Elvis Tsui) is murdered by the jewel thieves on the busy streets of Kowloon at the start of the movie.
The cop here is Ko Chow (Chow Yun-Fat, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), who is asked by Inspector Lau (Yeoh Sun, “Storm Over the Yangtse River”) to take the place of an undercover policeman who is stabbed to death by jewel thieves in the opening sequence. Chow, who is waiting for his resignation papers to go through, wants no part of it, but his relationship with Lau goes way back and he agrees. To get in with gang, he sells them guns and ammunition, which are in short supply, and soon bonds with the charismatic Fu (Danny Lee, “The Killer”), a friendship that gets deeper as a big heist draws near.
At the same time, the ambitious Inspector Chow (Kong Lau, “To Be Number One”) has been installed as the head of a special squad charged with stopping the jewel thieves. Ko Chow, who he suspects of being a gun-runner, is soon in his sites. When Lau tells him that Ko is a policeman, he refuses to back off. The inspectors are soon at loggerheads. Complicating things further, Ko’s relationship with his fiancé Hung (Carrie Ng, “The Kid”) is on shaky ground.
“City on Fire” clicks for another couple of reasons. The heists at the beginning and end of the film are white-knuckle stuff, especially because Lam doesn’t use fancy camera work when he goes for the gut and, as was his wont, he often filmed on the pulsing streets of Kowloon without permission, screenwriter Tommy Sham recalls in a new interview, “Burn It Down!” (18 mins.) To say the sequences have a sense of urgency sells them way short.
The other reason is Chow Yun-Fat, whose star was on the rise with the release of Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” in 1986. Dejeng and DeSanto point to the palpable confidence that he brought to the role. It’s a commanding performance — his Ko Chow is by turns flippant, funny, cocky and stone-cold serious.
(1-2) Chow is hauled to the city morgue where Inspector Lau (Yeoh Sun, right, second screenshot) asks him to take the place of Kam-Wah.
VIDEO/AUDIO
“City on Fire” was remastered in 4K UHD from the original camera negative and encoded with Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible). A comparison of the snippets from the original print in the Sham interview with the new restoration testifies to Shout! Studios’ handiwork. Kowloon’s garish neon lights positively glow, blacks are mostly stable and textures and facial details are sharp. The grain gets heavy at times, but that doesn’t detract from the experience; in a way, it ratchets up the story’s inherent grit. And, the new translated subtitles are easy to read.
The disc also features two audio tracks — the original Cantonese/Mandarin DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono and an English-dubbed (boo!) DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono. The ambient noise of Hong Kong is thick, but never overwhelms the dialogue. The explosions and gunfire, though, could stand a little more pop.
(1-3) The charismatic Fu (Danny Lee, center, first screenshot) and the gang hit a jewelry store in one of the movie’s most explosive sequences. (4) The ambitious Inspector Chow (Kong Lau, left), the head of a special unit charged with capturing the thieves, steps in.
EXTRAS
Shout! delivers in spades here, too, with a slew of new features. Start with the Sham feature. His first-hand experiences cover a lot of ground: How his screenwriting career happened by chance (his main job was writing for newspapers and magazines); working with Lam (they first crossed paths back in TV); the safety measures that were largely ignored during the shoot. He also talks candidly about the plight of screenwriters in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In a nutshell, they still aren’t given the respect that their contemporaries in America and Japan receive.
The Dejeng-DeSanto commentary is just as good. Dejeng, who knows ‘80s Hong Kong cinema inside and out, remembers what it was like when he first saw “City on Fire” in theaters, recalls meeting Lam and discusses the film locations in detail. DeSanto is also an enthusiastic commentator. Their track is casual and insightful.
Other new features include:
“Hong Kong Confidential” (11 mins.) Author Grady Hendrix looks at Lam’s early career as a comedy writer and “City on Fire’s” casting changes.
“Some Like It Hot” (33 mins.) In his video essay, author/critic Ric Myers traces Yun-Fat’s career from television through “City” and delves into vintage and contemporary Hong Kong and Japanese cinema.
“Burning Rivalries” (14 mins.) Author/critic/historian Kim Newman discusses the significant differences between “City of Fire” and “Reservoir Dogs” and points to earlier undercover cop and heist films that may have influenced Lam.
If all this whets your appetite, stay tuned. Shout! is releasing the “A Better Tomorrow” trilogy this fall. Woo directed the first two; Hark Tsui (“Once Upon a Time in China”), also a major player in Hong Kong action movies, directed the third.
— Craig Shapiro
(1) Lau feels the pressure from trying to keep Ko Chow out of Inspector Chow’s sights. (2) Ko Chow meets Fu to discuss furnishing the gang with guns. (3) Carrie Ng plays Chow’s fiancé Hung. Their relationship is on shaky ground. (4-5) Chow is taken to a cemetery and tested by the gang after delivering the guns. (6) Yun-Fat’s commanding performance is as physical as it is flippant, funny and dead-serious.
(1-3) The thieves hit another jewelry store then flee when the job goes does in flames. (4) Does this standoff look familiar? Quentin Tarantino borrowed it for “Reservoir Dogs.”
SPECS:
100 GB disc
TRUE 4K mastering
35mm cameras with spherical lens (1.85:1 aspect ratio)
Video bitrate: Consistently runs over 85 Megabits per second, with a running time of 105 minutes.
Rotten Tomatoes: All Critics – 88 percent, Moviegoers – 74 percent