At Metrograph, Dylan Cheung writes an excellent piece about Ringo Lam’s On Fire Trilogy. “At a moment when the city was obsessed with yuppy modernity, Lam returned Hong Kong cinema to its working-class roots. While Woo’s film romanticizes the criminal underworld, imbuing his gangsters with classical ideals of brotherhood and masculine dignity like the heroes of martial arts fiction, Lam, starting with City on Fire, presents an unashamedly blue-collar gangland, its criminals just regular Joes trying to make it through another day. The film was inspired by the real-life armed robbery of the Time Watch Company in 1985, in which seven men looted HK$1.8 million worth of luxury watches, and exchanged over 126 rounds of fire with the police—a heist that is re-enacted in Lam’s film. Lam attended the trial, wanting to see just what kind of men could pull off such a crime, only to leave disappointed when they turned out to be unremarkable losers. This same crushing reality permeates City on Fire: guns misfire, death is not heroic, and the world is full of bastards.”

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