City on Fire
- Sun, May 3
- Mon, May 4
- Tue, May 5
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Ringo Lam Ling-Tung Run Time: 105 min. Release Year: 1987
Starring: Carrie Ng Ka-Lai, Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Roy Cheung Yiu-Yeung, Sun Yueh
He thought he knew the risks of going undercover.
We are stepping away from the lens of John Woo to explore the eye of Ringo Lam, as we present his iconic 1987 action thriller City On Fire!
Ko Chow is an undercover cop who is under pressure from all sides. His boss, Inspector Lau, wants him to infiltrate a gang of ruthless jewel thieves; his girlfriend wants him to commit to marriage or she will leave Hong Kong with another lover; and he is being pursued by other cops who are unaware that he is a colleague. Chow would rather quit the force, feeling guilty about betraying gang members who have become his friends.
Stripped of glamour in favor of sweet, sweet desperation, City on Fire replaces operatic heroism with fatalism and realism, helping define a harder edge of Hong Kong action cinema that would echo for decades.
Our Hong Kong Action Essentials series explores the time from the mid-’80s through the early ’90s, where Hong Kong filmmakers rewrote the grammar of action cinema forever. Directors like John Woo, Tsui Hark, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, and Lau Kar-Leung fused balletic gunplay, risky stunts, martial arts virtuosity, and raw emotional intensity into a new cinematic language that would be oft-imitated but never replicated. (sorry, The Matrix, we love you too!) Join us every month in 2026 as we explore this golden age where style and emotional collided to change movies forever.