Rag­ing Fire

Rag­ing Fire is at its best when it’s show­cas­ing its out­ra­geous, fre­quent­ly bru­tal vio­lence – from the moment one char­ac­ter kicks an entire tele­phone box into an oppo­nent before sub­se­quent­ly crush­ing him with it. Direct­ed by the late Ben­ny Chan, who sad­ly passed dur­ing pro­duc­tion, the film con­cerns a game of cat-and-mouse between a police offi­cer and a group of bank rob­bers, with whom he shares a per­son­al connection.

Don­nie Yen (look­ing incred­i­bly youth­ful, play­ing a char­ac­ter about 20 years below his actu­al age) is Che­ung, a Hong Kong cop with a sup­pos­ed­ly unshake­able sense of moral­i­ty. He’s out for vengeance after his col­leagues are killed by a mys­te­ri­ous group of masked crooks with ties to Cheung’s precinct.

Yau (Nicholas Tse), the leader of the rob­bers, is Cheung’s polar oppo­site, a venge­ful mani­ac with a thin veneer of calm and a most­ly inco­her­ent phi­los­o­phy. Tse plays him with win­ning charm, lean­ing into the character’s delight­ful idio­syn­crasies (for starters, he works out while bran­dish­ing a large knife).

It’s a famil­iar set up, with Che­ung and Yau’s twin paths of revenge illus­trat­ing the thin line between cop and crim­i­nal. But look­ing for con­sis­tent ide­ol­o­gy here is a fool’s errand. Che­ung and Yau’s respec­tive cru­sades are sim­i­lar­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal: the for­mer decry­ing the betray­al of him and his com­rades while exe­cut­ing one for a sim­ple mis­take; the lat­ter car­ry­ing out bru­tal acts of vio­lence in his hunt for the crim­i­nals. While all of that is less impor­tant than the intense, bone-crunch­ing action it leads to, it makes it hard to care too much about emo­tion­al stakes – espe­cial­ly as the dead cops Che­ung is seek­ing to avenge are shown only in corny flash­back sequences.

Rag­ing Fire is let down by its black-and-white moral­i­ty, but it’s still invig­o­rat­ing to watch a large-scale mod­ern action film that places such empha­sis on actu­al bod­ies in motion. The gun­fights and scenes of hand-to-hand com­bat pack a real punch, each chaot­ic, thrilling­ly chore­o­graphed set-piece becom­ing grad­u­al­ly pul­verised by bul­lets. Out­side of the action, Chan fills every sequence with elec­tri­fy­ing visu­al flour­ish­es – quite lit­er­al­ly when he punc­tu­ates one scene with a cut to a bright yel­low bolt of light­ning streak­ing across the sky.

There’s still a delight­ful scrap­pi­ness to the film. A brawl in a small shan­ty town shows off Chan’s expert use of ver­ti­cal space, as Yen ducks and weaves from an over­whelm­ing assault. A fun, mul­ti­lay­ered chase spills out of a park­ing garage and onto a free­way, Chan care­ful­ly lay­ing out dif­fer­ent details – such as a hel­met visor cracked by a bul­let – to be expand­ed upon later.

Fol­low­ing a Heat-esque gun­fight in the streets, the sav­age yet grace­ful final show­down between Yen and Tse, set in a dilap­i­dat­ed church, is par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable. It’s a throw­back to the exhil­a­rat­ing, fero­cious Hong Kong action film­mak­ing of yore, cap­ping off a mus­cu­lar action­er that mar­ries old-school brava­do with con­tem­po­rary technique.

Trin­i­ty CineA­sia presents Rag­ing Fire in UK cin­e­mas from 12 Novem­ber and on Blu-ray, DVD & Dig­i­tal 31 Jan­u­ary, 2022.