Island of Fire

source: The Prisoner

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"

This movie was annoyingly slow paced. It is totally unforgivable for an action movie to be boring. The plot doesn't make much sense. The action scenes are mediocre and rare. the only thing that made it at all worthwhile is geting to see Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan die. Never before have I had the chance to view such things.

This movie is not a Jackie Chan movie, despite his name plastered all over the cover. But that's the least of it's problems. If you want to watch a somewhat nostalgic 90's movie featuring ridiculous Jackie Chan hair, this movie is for you. If you want to watch something coherent, stay far, far away. Basically, what we have here is a poor attempt at a prison movie. The plot focuses around a cop who goes undercover in a prison in an attempt to find out details about an inmate who's believed to have faked his own death. Simple enough plot. Problem: why in the hell did he have to beat the crap out of someone in order to get thrown in the prison? Couldn't the police just have made arrangements for him, rather than him serving a 2 year sentence to get some basic information? Jackie Chan's "character" is even worse. He gets thrown in the prison for what was clearly a manslaughter in self defense, and hardly appears in the movie at all. His character serves absolutely no purpose. There are some other characters along the way, like Sammo Hung, but ultimately the result is a shoddy movie that constantly features innocent men purposely committing crimes to get thrown in prison to fulfill a personal vendetta. Of course, that's not all. The last 15 minutes, the four male leads all have their executions faked and are suddenly now killing machines on an assassination mission. I don't use the term killing machines lightly - they take out numerous heavily armed soldiers through the use of a few handguns. The most comical part comes in the last scene of the movie when the undercover cop (now free) reunites with his girlfriend - the same girlfriend from two years ago when the movie began. The film clearly states that she had no idea he was undercover in prison; so basically, he screwed her over and she's happy to see him. To end it all, we have a small blooper reel during the credits which ultimately ends with a freeze frame of Jackie's smiling face, despite the fact he only gets a whopping 20 minutes of screen time. In short, avoid. This movie will leave you with more questions than answers, and it's not worth your time to ponder them. I don't want to get hung up on the whole "this isn't a Jackie Chan movie" thing, but the reality is that he only appeared in this movie as a favor to the director, who helped Jackie get out of some trouble with triads in the early 80's. In fact, Jackie hates this movie so much that he bought it's rights to ensure it's never distributed again (if you look around, you'll notice that it is no longer produced on DVD in any country).

Jackie Chan is not the star of this crazy collage as the video box suggests. I can't believe he made a movie with this much profanity and gratuitous violence. It just doesn't seem to be him. He isn't in the movie very much though. The action in this is very mediocre. It is funny at the end Jackie when Jackie is running around with guns blazing killing people like he is Rambo.

With a stellar line up of HK stars including Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Tony Leung and Andy Lau (some of whom appeared as a favour to the director, who was in dire financial trouble with some 'dodgy types'), this brutal film mixes emotional drama, savage violence and OTT action to deliver an effective little addition to the prison movie sub-genre. Tony Leung plays Andy, a cop who gets himself sent to prison after his future father-in-law is murdered by a supposedly executed convict. Whilst trying to figure out how a dead prisoner can become an assassin, he befriends various other prisoners, but himself becomes a target of some of the less desirable characters in the prison. Those drawn to this film by the presence of 'wacky Jackie' will be sorely disappointed, since Mr. Chan appears in only a few scenes, and even the fights he participates in are not up to his usual acrobatic standard. However, fans of the other big stars should get their money's worth; Prison on Fire may be no classic, but it is entertaining enough to be worth a go. Anyone who has seen their fair share of prison movies will know what to expect from this kind of affair: nice guy prisoners who we are supposed to root for; bad guys who make our hero's life a living hell; prison escapes and riots; and the occasional 'funny' scene to lift the mood (in this case, Sammo's ogling of a big breasted woman whose car breaks down near to his work detail). This one has it all! It also has a rather enjoyably silly ending which features loads of gunfire and some slow-motion squib effects, and more disturbingly, a shocking scene which features an Alsatian being kicked in the head (the poor mutt flies through the air and lands awkwardly on its back!). If you wish to check out this movie, find either the Taiwanese version, or the Hong Kong Legends DVD; the Taiwanese cut features several scenes missing from the US release, whilst the HK Legends disc includes them as an extra.

"Spoiler" describes my comments on this movie. If you haven't seen it, don't read this review. "Jackie Chan is The Prisoner." Usually when a title has the name of an actor in it, that actor is the main character. Not in "The Prisoner". Jackie Chan plays a tiny role, hardly showing his face in a fade-in, fade-out movie. Here's the plotline as far as I can tell (most of it is clouded by unnecessary dialogue and boring scenes): a policeman needs to reveal the plans of some guy who is in charge of a prison. In order to do that, he gets himself into trouble and ends up in the prison to go "undercover". First of all, why did he need to get in trouble? Couldn't the police department just stick him in there? Maybe not, but we never find out. He makes a friend, and the movie goes on in a hum-drum fashion, having little to do with helping the plot. Somehow Jackie Chan gets into a fight with a guy because he is the best pool player around. This man wanted him to lose a billiards game, but Jackie Chan didn't, so the guy tries to kill him and his girlfriend. His girlfriend gets stabbed in the back and needs a liver transplant (???). We never hear about her again with the exception of one line toward the end. He plays one long game of poker or other card game with someone and wins a ton of money, but this guy wants the money back and tries to fight him. Jackie accidentally kills him and ends up in the same prison. What are the chances of that happening? The plot moves on unsteadily. One guy constantly tries to escape to see his son and another loves his pet mouse, which we see only once. Soon the card gamer's brother gets in trouble and ends up in the same prison (what are the chances of THAT happening?) so he can kill Jackie Chan. They fight and Jackie ends up killing the head commissioner or somebody like that. Like I said, everything is clouded and foggy. Jackie and three others undergo a fake execution and must now kill some guy who we've never heard of before. There are a lot of guys in this movie. And then they turn invincible. They take on practically an army of guards and military personnel armed with semi-automatic and automatic weapons while they have only handguns. They never miss, yet the military personnel can never hit. Suddenly mass killing ensues. At one point, they are all running on a runway while fifty or sixty men are all firing at them. They aren't hit once until they almost reach their plane. Then they all die except the main character who blows open the big bad guy's plot. The plot has as many holes as swiss cheese, and the storyline to go with it is lacking exciting events. Nothing fits together, and the viewer is left behind to wonder what exactly is going on. Don't get me wrong. Most Jackie Chan movies have shallow plotlines, but they make it up with the excellently choreographed fight sequences. This one just puts guns to use to make mindless killing and boring fight scenes very unoriginal and useless. Nothing you'd expect to see in a Jackie Chan movie.

This is a confused mixture of a cop movie, a Kung Fu fight movie, a prison movie and then they decide they need to make a Chinese version of Cool Hand Luke. I love Jackie Chan movies when he is funny, but this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It is a total waste of his wonderful talents. Sure, there are fight scenes, but there aren't that many. It looks like they kept changing their mind about what the movie was going to be, but they didn't redo the whole movie, just start the new direction and then splice it all together.

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 film was a real disappointment to martial art and Jackie Chan films. The film states Jackie Chan's name and even shows only his face on the cover, but in actuality, he is only shown for about 15 minutes of the films duration. He does not play the main character. He is not shown doing his well-known martial arts skill and is mostly shown fight while wielding a weapon. This film could have been improved greatly.