Prison on Fire

A decent prison drama, but a more expansive plot wouldn’t have done it any harm at all, as not much happens in these 107 minutes. Other than that, however, the actors are great, the fight scenes are properly naturalistic and there is no lack of emotion. I was a bit surprised by the democratic nature of the system within the prison with respect to the relationship between the prisoners and the lawmen. Three and a half stars. (08/04/2005)

To start off with, this may seem to be an average and interesting story that has been presented in movie form several times already about the hard life behind bars, but as the movie continues, it increases in quality. Especially toward the end, the atmosphere thickens massively. It is kept above water in the introductory part by the actors alone. Chow Yun-Fat is absolutely convincing again and charisma simply oozes from him, which, knowing him, is hardly surprising, but the others’ performances are also great and you have no problem in believing that they are real cons. Like a lot of HK movies, this builds mainly on the friendship of the central duo, but I would still categorize it as a rough and raw picture like Lockdown, rather than a “human interest" movie like The Shawshank Redemption. (05/14/2005)

Only after about thirty minutes did the talking stop and something started to happen. What caught my attention is that Ringo Lam (unlike, for example, Frank Darabont in The Shawshank Redemption) focuses more on the prison's routines and rules rather than on the characters and their relationships, this is the main and crucial point of the story. Although the story itself is quite simple, the skillful, typically sharp Hong Kong direction, raw setting, and extremely rough action scenes stand out even more. They are scarce during must of the film, but towards the end, it's a real blast. (06/04/2005)