In Ringo Lam's City on Fire, (Brother) Chow Yun-Fat plays Ko Chow, a chain-smoking undercover agent with his sights set on "resignation." At the request of his cop uncle (pleasant Sun Yeuh), and against his fiancé's (unpleasant Carrie Ng) wishes, natch, Chow agrees to implicate a group of known jewel thieves by arming them with illegal weapons. But the snakes at headquarters have bigger plans for Chow, ordering him to become fraternal to the robbers until they invite him along on their next big heist.

Quentin Tarantino had the right idea when he expanded the last ten minutes of City on Fire to feature-length for Reservoir Dogs. City on Fire's warehouse climax is by far its most compelling section, but the sequence bites off more than it can chew; it sums up themes that it also introduces! The filmmakers burn up so much energy getting Chow onto criminal turf that they don't take the trouble to develop the relationships once there, thus failing in their stab at poignancy when one of the thieves (Danny Lee) shows his loyalty to Chow by starting and engaging in a Mexican stand-off with the remaining gang members--in his previous assignment, Chow bonded with his doomed mark, an emotional dilemma he had hoped not to repeat. Yet another American film did City on Fire one better in this particular regard: Donnie Brasco.

City on Fire has interesting qualities that raise its sum value. I liked Lam's lean approach to the cops 'n' robbers often vicious shenanigans: the requisite wiretap is only as complex as Chow taping a cassette recorder to his belly, while the heists entail lots of commotion and gunfire and stuffing bags full with necklaces--none of the gadget-assisted ballet we see in Robert De Niro movies. And Brother Chow's performance, 180° from the distinguished gentleman persona he cultivated in the decade that followed (check out that eighties hair and Marty McFly attire!), is ultimately affecting. Dimension could've perhaps looped a voice closer to Brother Chow's timbre, not to mention less comical ones for the otherwise deliciously loathsome police department heads.

I haven't seen Universe's region-free, Chinese-language release of City on Fire, but based on their efforts I have sampled, it's safe to presume that Dimension's DVD looks better. (The brightest promise of any major studio's English revamp of a Hong Kong flick is a more-than-tolerable image.) Letterboxed in anamorphic widescreen at 1.85:1, the transfer boasts acceptable contrast, at least, with better-than-average colour rendition for an HK title. The print's speckling is fairly minor; any grain has a video noise quality, like Criterion's LaserDisc of The Killer. After one gets past the dubbing--and lowers the volume considerably--the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is an unexpected sonic delight, atmospheric almost to a fault: the crime scene scenes can be disorienting, what with sirens and walkie-talkie blares competing for attention in the split surrounds, and ambient bass is over-the-top in chapter 13 (a simulated rowdy party that Chow can hear from across the street). The remix really does succeed in "placing" the viewer. Bonus material is limited to a two-page selection of "sneak peek" trailers: The Yards, Essex Boys, The Legend of Drunken Master, Supercop, Supercop 2, Twin Warriors (a.k.a. The Tai Chi Master), and Fist of Legend.-Bill Chambers