Prison on Fire

Director: Ringo Lam

1987 / 98min / 35mm

Meek white-collar worker Tony Leung Ka-fai looks like defenseless fresh meat when he goes into prison on a manslaughter charge, but he survives thanks to the protection of longtime inmate Chow Yun-fat. Their friendship becomes a bastion of finer feelings in the brutal lockup, a microcosm of mercenary Hong Kong society ruled by triad gangs and crooked guards, the worst of them Roy Cheung’s skull-cracking sadist, whose final confrontation with Chow is one of the most searing expressions of revolutionary rage in all of HK cinema.

35mm print courtesy of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Distributror: AGFA

Part of Ringo Lam on Fire