Film

City on Fire

Name: City on Fire
Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime, Thriller
Released: 1987
Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Sun Yueh, Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Carrie Ng Ka-Lai, Roy Cheung Yiu-Yeung

Other titles called City on Fire: the 1979 film.

Ringo Lam's 1987 undercover-cop noir puts Chow Yun-Fat inside a jewel-thief gang, torn between loyalty to the crooks he's befriended and the cops who don't trust him. It's smoky, sweaty, morally exhausted crime cinema — less about shootouts than about a man slowly losing himself. Famous now as the film Tarantino borrowed heavily from for Reservoir Dogs, but the original still hits harder.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to stories where a divided man's inner fatigue matters more than the caper plot, and where style does much of the talking.

Skip it if your patience for loose plotting and drifting stretches is limited, since it wanders and leans on mood more than on tight, satisfying mechanics.

What it asks of you: At 105 minutes it is brisk, but it wants you to track shifting loyalties in your head while the mood stays heavy and restless throughout.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

A Better Tomorrow1986

The film that launched the heroic-bloodshed genre and reunited Chow Yun-Fat with director John Woo — trench coats, twin pistols, and brotherhood pushed to operatic extremes. If City on Fire's loyalty-versus-duty ache hooked you, this is its swaggering cousin.

But The plotting is thinner and the sentimentality thicker than Lam's film — this is melodrama first, character study second.

Hard Boiled1992

Woo and Chow Yun-Fat again, this time cranking the action to absurd, balletic heights — the hospital shootout alone is worth the price of admission. Less soul-searching than City on Fire, but the same wounded-cop DNA runs through it.

But If you came for moral complexity rather than gunplay, this leans hard into spectacle over introspection.

The Killer1989

Another Woo/Chow Yun-Fat collaboration, this one about a hitman and the cop hunting him forming an unlikely bond — the same fascination with loyalty across enemy lines that powers City on Fire, dialed up to operatic melodrama.

But The emotional pitch is relentlessly high; subtlety isn't really on the menu here.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from City on Fire

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Donnie Brasco1997

Same undercover-cop-goes-native premise as City on Fire, but played as a quiet character tragedy instead of a genre thriller — the friendship between Pacino's mobster and Depp's mole mirrors Chow's bond with the gang he's meant to betray.

Pacino and Depp are extraordinary as an aging mobster and the FBI agent who comes to love him, and the film understands undercover work as a slow erosion of self rather than a source of action-movie tension.

But It trades Lam's heat and violence for a much quieter, sadder register — patient rather than propulsive.

Infernal Affairs2002

Hong Kong's other essential undercover-cop classic, and arguably the genre's most perfectly engineered thriller — a mole in the police and a cop inside the triads, each unsure who to trust. Cut from the same cloth as City on Fire.

But It's slicker and more plot-mechanical, trading some of Lam's grime and sweat for polish.

Reservoir Dogs1992

Tarantino's debut lifts entire scenes and beats from City on Fire almost wholesale — watching them back to back is a genuine education in how influence and homage actually work. Sharper dialogue, less heart.

But Knowing the direct lift can make it feel more like spot-the-reference than a film standing on its own.

PTU2003

Johnnie To's nocturnal Hong Kong crime thriller follows a police unit hunting for a lost gun over one increasingly tense night — same city, same moral murk, a cooler and more controlled temperature than Lam's film.

But It's slower and more ensemble-driven; don't expect a single charismatic lead to hang onto.

Election2005

Johnnie To turns triad succession politics into something closer to a mob-boardroom thriller — patient, brutal, and fascinated by the machinery of loyalty and betrayal that also drives City on Fire.

But It's cerebral and slow-burning rather than kinetic; the violence is sparing and sudden rather than constant.

Exiled2006

Five gunmen, old loyalties, and a doomed sense of brotherhood — To's film is practically a spiritual sequel to the Woo/Lam era, with the same ache of men caught between duty and friendship.

But The plot is thin by design; it's mood and iconography over narrative complexity.

Long Arm of the Law1984

A grittier, lesser-known precursor from three years before City on Fire, following mainland robbers trapped in Hong Kong after a heist goes wrong — rawer, meaner, and just as fatalistic about men with no way out.

But Rougher production values and a colder emotional register than Lam's film; it's bleak with little relief.

Le Samouraï1967

Decades before Lam's morally exhausted cops and criminals, Melville built the template — the cool, doomed professional operating by a private code the modern world has no room for. City on Fire's fatalism carries this film's fingerprints, however indirectly.

Alain Delon's blank, immaculate hitman is cinema's original stoic outsider, and Melville's minimalist Paris underworld is one of the most influential crime films ever made.

But It's glacially paced by comparison and almost entirely without dialogue in stretches — patience required.

Line of Duty2012

Swap Hong Kong jewel thieves for British police corruption and you've got the same engine as City on Fire — an officer whose loyalty to the institution and to the people he's investigating pulls him apart, stretched now across six nerve-shredding seasons instead of 105 minutes.

A British procedural about undercover officers and corrupt cops that turns interrogation scenes into some of the tensest television ever made — the slow-burn version of Chow Yun-Fat's dilemma.

But It's a long-term commitment across multiple seasons, and the bureaucratic jargon takes an episode or two to click.