Iconic Hong Kong director, producer, and screenwriter Ringo Lam has died

December 30, 2018 8:54 AM

R.I.P. Veteran Hong Kong Director Ringo Lam (AV Club obituary) "A veteran of the Hong Kong film scene, Lam exploded into the world of action and crime films with his 1987 feature City On Fire—still held up as both a codifying film in the “bad men with guns and honor” sub-genre of crime pictures, and the unofficial inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Although his later films—including multiple American movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme, many of them weirdly obsessed with duplicates and doubles—failed to capture that same initial burst of style or creative energy, Lam’s influence on the modern action picture is impossible to discount."

"Consciously following in the footsteps of John Woo’s genre-defining A Better Tomorrow—including casting that film’s breakout star, Chow Yun-fat, as the conflicted undercover cop at its center—City Of Fire is exactly the kind of tense, grittily violent tale of divided loyalties that various American directors would spend the next 20 years occasionally copying, to varying degrees of success. Trading heavily on Chow’s angsty charisma (and Lam’s years of building up his action choreography chops), the film helped cement a whole universe of movies about bad men holding desperately to codes of honor that are increasingly out of line with their violent work."

Hollywood Reporter obituary

Star obituary

Wikipedia filmography

posted by soundguy99 (9 comments total)

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posted by Ickster at 9:01 AM on December 30, 2018

I don't know why Lam's rep suggests the later work are not nearly as interesting, I find them tighter, and simpler, but deeply committed to a kind of formal investgation as cities, different, but no worse. I don't think we would have the heist revival we do today, without his City on Fire, but I wanted to point out Wild City from 2015, which has these almost interstitial shots of subways winding their way through the industrial and semi industrial lairs that a set of criminals did business in---talked about the failure of infrastructure, the city as a living, breathing monster, and how we can hide through spaces. He was a master.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:03 AM on December 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

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posted by nightrecordings at 11:20 AM on December 30, 2018

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posted by brundlefly at 12:00 PM on December 30, 2018

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posted by Joey Michaels at 12:28 PM on December 30, 2018

aww man. full contact was a favorite of mine in the days of my callow youth. a more recent viewing exposed some... problematic elements (imagine!) but the bullet cam stuff still holds up, and fat and wong still play off of each other was well as ever. city on fire is one of those movies that i should have seen but haven't... perhaps i'll have to correct that soon.

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posted by rotten at 3:08 PM on December 30, 2018

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posted by Pendragon at 5:48 PM on December 30, 2018

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posted by porpoise at 7:06 PM on December 30, 2018

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posted by hap_hazard at 10:30 PM on December 31, 2018