Island of Fire

Story takes place in a prison. Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Sammo Hung and few other stars of the era. The movie is supervised by Jackie Chan's old colleague Jimmy Wang Yu.

The plot is about a prison where the convicts are part of a recruitment program to do special biddings for the government. The selection criteria is not obvious, but it seems that one's who had a fight in the prison and fought well got recruited. Who the true culprit is, and what twist in the plot there is at the end must be seen.

It's one of few movie where Jackie is not the star. There's also a rare fight scene between Jackie and Andy Lau.

It's hard to categorize what this movie is. It's a generic action movie, but there's lot of super A list actors appearing just as a co-star. Unfortunately they are under utilized, and the movie fails to achieve stellar performance it could have had.

Maybe this was movie made based on friends getting together, and chipping in their talents. This would have been possible with someone with Jimmy Wang's clout.

The movie is somewhat of an enigma in Hong Kong movie history.

Island on Fire (1990) was released in three different version, the Hong Kong theatrical run, the badly dubbed nonsensical U.S. version and the original two hour plus Taiwan cut. The best one out of the three is the Taiwanese print. This film was a "charity" film that was made to help the director who was in some real "financial" trouble with some shady characters.

The director's best friend "Jimmy" Wang Yu called up some actors who "owed" him some favors. The top flight actors did the work for little or no pay. They were making a movie that was going to make some money, not a classic or anything like that. Just a quick film that'll make some fast bucks. Let's take a look at the different prints shall we?

1.) The Hong Kong cut is a fast paced action film. Only the bare bones are left. Little plot is left in the way of seeing some of the actors on the screen. The story is simple, someone is hiring dead criminals to whack important people. Tony Leung Ka Fai get's involved when his fiancée's father get's whacked by the "dead" assassin. After snooping around he finds out that they're coming from a Taiwanese prison. So, old Tony gets himself arrested and his buddy pulls a few strings to get him inside the "big house".

2.) The United States print re-dubs a lot of the scenes making many of them nonsensical. The dialog is drastically changed and some scenes are just re-dubbed (i.e. Jackie Chan is thrown in prison for accidentally killing Andy Lau's brother).

Whilst in prison Andy Lau tries to have some of his inside men try and kill Jackie. Wang Yu doesn't want the prisoners killing each other or stupid things like that. He wants it civil inside. So to placate Lau's men he slices his arm and squeezes out some blood whilst telling them, "Let Lau know that I have bled for his brother, there will be no violence in my prison." Well, to that effect any way.

In the U.S. version he just cuts his arm to show the two how "crazy" he can get. "You wanna see crazy! I'll show you crazy!!" he tells the two as he cut's his arm?! Doesn't make any sense. It goes on like this for ninety minutes! The DVD is horrible, not only is it badly dubbed but the "commentary" is worthless. Hell I know more about the movie than the guy they put on it.

3.) The Taiwanese cut is over two hours long and it fleshes out the characters. Unlike the Hong Kong version, the film is fully subtitled in English (the subs disappear during the last eight minuted in the Hong Kong print). What I like about the Taiwan version is that the true motives of the characters are revealed. The movie makes a lot more sense and you call feel for them. It's also not as jumpy and confusing.

The rest of the movie is real interesting. You'll be in for a surprise by the wild ending and the shocking conclusion!

Highly recommended!

Taiwan print: A+

H.K. print: B

U.S. print: F-

This is the Chinese version of 'Cool Hand Luke'. I didn't like the Paul Newman version but after seeing this, I've got to give Paul Newman a lot more credit.

I watch it because I'm a huge Jackie Chan fan. See it if you must, but watch the original first (Cool Hand Luke - 1967). The American version is much more entertaining.

"Sometimes nothin' is a real cool hand"

The prisoner is a typical hongkong action movie, with great action but also with exxagerated drama and humour. But if you are a fan like me, you will get used to this if you watch a lot of them. The prisoner is a serious movie with some humour in it. It isn't a jackie chan movie, but it is a movie with jackie chan in it. A serious one, which we don't get to see very often . But in this he is great, especially at the end (Jackie a la John Woo).

I saw the dubbed-into-English version of this. My recommendation is, don't bother. It's a stretch to call this a Jackie Chan movie, since he's involved in less than one-third of the movie.

The fight scenes are not nearly as well choreographed as thoes in most other Chan movies, and the filmmakers try to make up for this through tight editing. Much of the time, it's impossible to see what the moves are.

The plot is confusing, and the script is horrible. There are times when it takes on some qualities of "Plan 9 from Outer Space" when it blends incoherence with bad acting.

The surround sound is technically well done, though.