Disc Reviews
City on Fire 4k Review
Ringo Lam and Chow Yun Fat teamed up back in 1986 to make a film, that certainly launched Lam into the bigger game of action/thriller/drama film making, and bolstered another notch on Fat’s growing resume, merely a year after his big break with John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. City on Fire, caught the attention of certain writers in the early 90s when Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs took hold and people started to notice the influence this film had on Tarantino’s film. This Arrow 4K mentions that very fact in several places in the extras – but as they will attest, whilst there are clear moments or shots that are familiar to both films, it’s still a very small pieces that were taken.
City on Fire is largely a drama about a Hong Kong police officer, Ko (Chow Yun Fat), who has to go undercover to help resolve the recent murder of a fellow undercover police officer. So, the stakes are high, and the jobs (namely, the climactic jewel store robbery) are even more dangerous. Not helped are his superiors on the case who waste more time arguing with each other’s tactics rather than getting much work done, and all at the cost of Ko’s survival and mental state.
City on Fire looks pretty good. The city looks great (and it was all show for real on the streets of Hong Kong – and apparently always without permission of the authorities). There is a vibrancy to the feel of real streets and real people walking about, and when there are moments of action, it feels as dangerous as it probably was to execute.
Yun Fat, riding high after A Better Tomorrow, puts in a great performance, as does the other side of his coin, Danny Lee (the member of the gang that Ko bonds with).
Lam certainly made his mark with this one, and like his contemporaries John Woo and Tsui Hark, also made his way over to the USA briefly and ended up making not one, not two, but three movies with Jean Claude Van Damme (Maximum Risk, Replicant and In Hell). Woo made just the one with Hard Target, Hark made two with Double Team and Knock Off. Either way, Van Damme knew who to get, and whilst the results of the six films are mixed, they are all worth checking out, even just for how each of these directors handles action.
The bonus material relies on a few archival interviews from 2005 (which includes Lam – who sadly passed away in 2018. Newer material includes a commentary by a couple of cinema experts, an interview with the screenwriter, and a couple of appreciations of the film, which are both fine for what they are (They often state the obvious, but tell a story worth listening to once). It’s not the most extensive package, but considering the film is almost 40 years old, it’s ample enough, and the picture is decent. What isn’t decent, sadly, is the sound. Now this is as good as the original sound is probably going to get, but the issue is that films like this, back then, did a lot of the sound work after the shooting, and the quality of the sound, and particularly the vocal tracks are just horrible and might take people unaware out of the picture for a bit. Rest assured, this is normal, and unless someone is ready to pipe in a ton of money to redo the sound entirely (Which would probably mean using new voices altogether), then it seems like a lost cause. But plenty of people out there love the original sound as it is – don’t think that John Woo’s early catalogue is going to be any better! But we will see on that when Arrow releases their 4K for Hard Boiled next March!
Overall, though, if you want to collect the best of Hong Kong crime movies, then this one is an easy pick! Fingers crossed Arrow doesn’t stop at Hard Boiled next year and get us more Woo, Hark and Lam.
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless Cantonese and English mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the Cantonese soundtrack and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
• Brand new audio commentary by Hong Kong cinema experts Frank Djeng and F.J. DeSanto
• Burn It Down, a brand new interview with screenwriter Tommy Sham
• Hong Kong Confidential, a brand new appreciation by author Grady Hendrix
• Some Like It Hot, a brand new appreciation by film historian Ric Meyers
• Burning Rivalries, a brand new appreciation by critic Kim Newman
• An archival interview with director Ringo Lam
• Portrait of Anger, an archive interview with cinematographer Andrew Lau
• Long Arm of the Law, an archive interview with co-star Roy Cheung
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
• Illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Dylan Cheung
City on Fire is out on 4K Blu-Ray December 1st