City On Fire

First things last: Yes, this is that "City On Fire", the one which Quentin Tarantino used as a template for "Reservoir Dogs".

But what Tarantino did with hard-noir dialogue and references to pop-culture, Lam does with subtle gestures and brooding pathos...

In short: it's practically a different movie.

QT used the suits from "A Better Tomorrow II" and the basic premise from this film, and though Harvey Kietel's nod to the two-guns action of Chow Yun Fat is practically a straight-faced steal, "Reservoir Dogs" is to "City on Fire" what "Little Caesar" was to "The Public Enemy".

Both are great movies, and though this came first, I still find myself watching 'Reservoir...' a little more often.

Chow Yun Fat plays Chow (must've taken the scriptwriter ages to come up with that!), the role played by Tim Roth in 'Reservoir...' Chow's an undercover cop, whose out to nail a gang of jewel thieves (where's John Malkovich?!) who are planning to rob a bank. He becomes a solid member of the gang and ingratiates himself with the other pros, forming an inevitably futile, but strong friendship with Danny Lee, (who'd work with Fat again in John Woo's classic 'The Killer').

But when the heist goes awry, Chow takes a bullet in the stomach, panic ensues and guns blaze across the crowded streets of Hong Kong; in the mad dash to make a run for it, accusations are thrown back and forth, mistrust settles in and as an army of cops mount outside the gang's hideout, the Mexican standoff from 'Reservoir...' is played out verbatum by the crims.

City on Fire's original, eastern title is "Long hu feng yun"