Prison On Fire
NR, 98 min.
Directed by Ringo Lam, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Ka-Kui Ho, Fui-On Shing, Kwong Leung Wong, Roy Cheung.

In this Hong Kong movie, Chow Yun-Fat (Anna and the King) plays a cynical prisoner jailed for the manslaughter of his adulterous wife who befriends a framed innocent (Tony Leung). Chow bucks the Triads and endures beatings from the sadistic warden, all of which ends with a flood of mayhem. Lam’s action style of filmmaking is as revered by connoisseurs as that of John Woo. He established his reputation with such films as Full Contact and City on Fire (the movie that some argue serves as the model for Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs).

This article appears in March 31 • 2000.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.