Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Paul Magne Haakonsen "Island of Fire" is a fairly average prison-type of movie in regards to the story, but there is just something captivating about it.Andy (played by Tony Leung Ka Fai) goes undercover to infiltrate a rough prison run by corrupt officers using the prisoners to run fights and do their dirty work.As a prison movie, of course you have all the standard stereotypical characters here; the mafia-type overhead in charge of the inmates, the ruffians serving the overhead, the innocent prisoners rising up when cornered, the prisoners fueled by a fight for righteous. There is nothing grand or new to the characters, and truth be told, there is very little room for character development in the movie, and you hardly get to sympathize for any of them or dig into their stories.The movie is driven by the story and the raw action, though. And I must admit that it was nice to see Andy Lau actually play a bad guy for a change. And even more of a surprise towards the end to see both Steve (played by Jackie Chan) and Boss Lee (played by Andy Lau) getting gunned down and presumably die. And another plus is that you actually see Jackie Chan in a violent role and is killing people!There are some pretty heavyweight Hong Kong movie stars in "Island of Fire". You have Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Ka Fai, and of course Jackie Chan.I bought the Hong Kong Legends release of the movie and it has Jackie Chan on the cover, so I was under the impression that it was a regular Chan movie. But it turned out not to be the case, and he actually only have a minor role in the movie. But of course, his name and face sells, so why not put him on the cover? Although names like Sammo Hung, Andy Lau or Tony Leung Ka Fai would sell equally well (perhaps not to the Western market, though).And whatever you do, do not watch this movie with the English dubbed soundtrack, it is just awful. Watch it with the original Mandarin language, I switched to that upon hearing the first English being uttered. I just hate dubbed versions, especially badly dubbed versions."Island of Fire" is a great movie, despite it being from 1990. It is driven by a captivating story and some good acting performances actually. And if for nothing else, watch it because of the Hong Kong heavyweight stars that are in it.

daworldismine this action flick is solid entertainment, it has Jackie Chan,sammo hung,Andy lau, tony leung, jimmy Wang yu, its a prison movie and it has all the usual cliché's but it also has some fantastic fights scenes, and a brilliant shoot out at the end, it isn't' the best movie that these actors have starred in but it's a solid one none the less, and Jackie Chan ain't no fool here he's a hard boiled man with a short temper, sammo hung is a loving farther and jimmy Wang yu the top dogg, i like the movie because it tries to be more than just a prison movie and succeeds, it's similer in tone to a john woo movie but with less gun play. it's an ensemble movie and all the cast get their big moment,but no one here is really a main star, everybody is equal, it's not the best action movie out there but it's a damn entertaining one.

Jmc489 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).

winslowcotton 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.