Island on Fire (Huo shao dao, 1990)
A disjointed prison movie featuring a cast of HK film greats: Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Wang Yu (who I gather many of the stars owed favors to, which is how they ended up here). It could have been a knockout, but instead it's merely so-so, highlighted by a few strong performances (Sammo especially, and Wang Yu who is intensely creepy as a too-powerful prisoner). Anyway, the plot seems to be about a cop going undercover to investigate corrupt prison officials, but it gets tied up in the individual prisoners' stories, and then goes into bizarro-land with a John Woo-style shoot-em-up ending.
It's not even slashy, really, which is an unforgivable sin with a prison movie!
Beware also the Tai Seng video release--which is missing subtitles entirely for the final scene!
SUMMARY:
Overall rating: C. It could have been so much better!
Droolworthiness: B+ You can't really go wrong with that many men locked up together.
Slashiness: D If there was anything of note there, I was too distracted or bored to notice it.
Action: B The film's one saving grace is the rather good gun-battle ending, and Jackie does have a couple decent fighting scenes.
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