Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Guy FIRE OF CONSCIENCE is a Dante Lam film and continues his fascination with armed cops and dodgy Chinese philosophy. This time his burnt out hero is a Sergeant, hunting for the pickpocket who murdered his wife, one police brutality charge at a time. He connects with a by-the-book guy from the Narc squad who may not be as clean as he appears, which gives us the inevitable cop on cop finale. The big shift this time is that in addition to some typically loud shoot-outs in crowded locations and cramped spaces, we also get a lot of character work; the good guys have bad aspects and the bad guys have good sides. It's nice that everybody has a reason for what they're doing, but in truth the characterisation doesn't always connect. Still, it's a cool HK action movie with more heart than we're used to.

dumsumdumfai Disappointed. really. Especially by the tacked on philosophical ending. Completedly out of character with the first 15 min. (Which I can hardly remember)There's a buddy-buddy cop thing going on. Which is kind of hooky - forced and plot oriented. The undertow of hidden agenda is expected, and it's well played. There's some great action sequence - the entire restaurant scene - but is that homage to Woo? , the car chase...etc. But the ending... just a bit much for me - from the birth to the dragon dance bit. This mix-and-match doesn't.But it's just above average. The average of other HK movies.

honorhorror For the record, I just watched another Dante Lam movie "Witness"(Mandarin title,English Title is "Beast Stalker") before seeing For Lung. While seeing Beast Stalker, I have always had this feeling of understatement in tension but overstatement in melodramatic emotional developments. Luckily in For Lung, which totally surprised me with all the kinetic power it demonstrated, director Dante Lam learned to turn the movie upside-down.You can't have Hong Kong movies without clichés like locations. Violent events taking place in Mongkok is just like a story you always hear but never really see happening. Luckily, the camera focus of For Lung seems to be quite self-aware that it successfully portrayed several different cops yet allowed the audiences to relate to each of them. Leon Lai(Li Ming)'s Captain Manfred is quite a compelling character to watch. He's truly seasoned, troubled yet had a broken family to deal with. Ritchie Ren(Ren Xianqi)'s inspector Kee is much more refined with some serious charisma, but he's not who he seems to be. Kai Chi Liu plays Captain Manfred's sidekick, who's loyal yet lived a quite unexamined life. The narration is tightened up, which made all these cops more involved and allowed audiences to relate to them much better than in Beast Stalker.In terms of performances, almost everyone around is remarkable in their running-scared roles. They definitely gave the taste of their fear/thirsty for violence. That being said, they are all quite convincing. As the story goes on, all the main characters got their side-stories, some bitter-sweet, some bitter-not-sweet. But, I can guarantee you they are all more genuine and involving than Beast Stalker. They are quite insightful glimpses into modern Chinese(HK included) and their mental status quo. However, this also lead to a little disappointment at the epilogue of the story.Sometimes, I can read the context that director Lam didn't want the audiences to enjoy those gunfights, because these gunfights are better described as "mayhem" or "disaster" as they have such realistic edges that you will pray not to get involved in one like that.Director Lam said that the reason he wanted to name the movie "For Lung"(literally translated as "flaming dragon") is to pay homage to HK the city. Dancing with paper dragons is a Chinese tradition during new years, which according to legends scared off man-eating-monsters and plagues alike. Yet, the symbol of flaming dragon is interpreted in the movie to be simply the "passion" in one's heart, be it passion to love, or passion to revenge, get even, etc. Disappointedly, the movie undervalued the visual/literal aspects of this otherwise more dynamic symbol, and pushed the final chase into a Buddhist temple, where your passions got cleansed according to Buddhism. In the closing shots, Captain Manfred gave a quite unfitting comment to conclude the movie, that "everyone's got a demon in their heart, I gave in to it." In my opinion, this movie could be quite self-contained simply with the justice nailed. If one wants to go deep in reflection, simply telling the audiences that "everyone's got a demon in their hearts" seemed forced and hollow.The core conversation of the movie, equally profound and heartbreaking, was between Inspector Kee and his former mentor who's a retired police officer. The rich, happy yet balanced life of his mentor was a sad mirror to Kee's broken, crime-riddled life. In their friendly conversation, the mentor used his own experience to persuade Kee to let go of his marriage which was questioned by the bureaus because the woman Kee's about to marry was once a prostitute. Kee was an emotional man so he refused to approve his mentor's point. The mentor continued with the point that "to man, career is more important than wife and house" which is a pretty traditional oriental point, categorizing wife and house in the same group. The mentor commented, "Once you owned them, you shouldn't think about them that hard anymore". The western audiences and young oriental audiences will quickly get a grasp of the villainous nature of this conversation. Yet in my opinion, it provided the basis for the tragedies in this movie. It's tragic for Kee because despite his hard attitude which insisted marrying the flawed fiancé, he himself doesn't have faith in such a relationship. The way they are about to proceed is even harsher, and worse, they are in debt of about 500,000 dollars. It's tragic to hear this conversation because, like Kee we may not have faiths in the goodness of life after all, and we may not have a logic and value system that's more persuasive than his mentor.In a society where dogs' surviving logic brings fortune, while heroes' logic brings chaos and tragedies, the director/writer Dante Lam might be very angry. Yet if the only thing dogs don't cross is the legal line, why do the heroes have to bear so many tragic consequences? The angry "fiery dragon" or the "demon" in Captain Manfred and Kee's hearts kicked off this adrenaline-pounding actioner, which presented you 3-dimensional characters. They are 3-dimensional because they can't see anything beyond, instead they see a lot below in the abyss. The final "redemption" of Captain Manfred was just a return to the "flat" reality we live in.There are consequences to every choice we make. Though we may not have undertaken so much as Captain Manfred did, we can learn to protect our heart. That's something every religion talks about. According to left-wing artist Oliver Stone, "The world is flat". I surely hope he doesn't mean "perfect" by "flat" because otherwise we will have to accept all the dirty rules detested in this movie. What I am compelled to tell other people who've seen this movie is, we can be 3-dimensional too, but in another direction. With Jesus way of cross, we can actually defy the gravity of abyss that sucked in Kee. All you need is to believe.

DICK STEEL Dante Lam is fast cementing his position in the Hong Kong film industry as one of the go-to directors for an action cop-thriller, with his previous films Sniper and Beast Stalker, in collaboration with writer Ng Wai Lun doing just that, not to the penchant of tackling characters with plenty of emotional baggage straddling in between the grey moral areas, allowing the actors portraying them to be noticed for their dramatic chops.The film opens with plenty of money shots for its opening montage, the first being a special effects laden time lapse shot of Leon Lai's Sergeant Manfred slowly growing older and looking more haggard, no thanks to his donning yet another unkempt bearded look. Then there's a Watchmen opening credits inspired series of black and white stills that freeze frames some really insane action moments which tell a little bit about the back-stories that we're soon going to get entrenched in as the narrative moves forward, thus while they don't make much sense now, they will get explained in due course, just to keep your suspense piqued.As mentioned, characters with deep emotional baggage are probably going to be a staple in Dante Lam's films, and Sergeant Manfred is on the verge of throwing away his 27 years of veteran service by employing an unorthodox, hair shaving quirk after apprehending any pickpocket on the streets, bringing them to an eyewitness to his wife's murder. This of course leads to complaints about his heavy-handedness, and investigations by internal affairs of a needless, violent cop on the force, but it doesn't faze him as he goes on a determined search of his wife's killer.Richie Jen on the other hand, as Inspector Kee, may look the gentleman, but he too has plenty of cards kept under his sleeve, coming from the Narcotics Bureau and wanting to work at the Crimes Unit. He takes to Sergeant Manfred on a typical night on duty where they both share similar, unflattering views of their superiors and top brass and how disconnected they can be when sitting atop the ivory tower detached from the men and happenings on the ground, and both men soon form a working partnership as they collaborate into the investigations of a hooker, where signs initially point to one of Manfred's subordinates (Liu Kai Chi).Action wise, there are a number of huge gun battles here that will max out the sound system of the cinema, and Lam crafts plenty of chase sequences, gun play and moments enough that will make the action junkie in you go wild given the unflinching, graphic violence, especially when Lai's Manfred goes for broke. A critical battle scene takes place in a teahouse, and I think as ubiquitous a teahouse can get in Hong Kong, nothing beats having a standoff and a shootout in an HK action flick, this one upping the ante with massive grenade explosions, body count and a narrative moment which will make you go a baffling "hmm..." since it did stick out like a sore thumb, but fret not as all's set to be explained soon enough. The only letdown I had, which no thanks to promotional stills and the trailer is that of having Manfred and his team race down the busy streets on foot and carrying some heavy firepower, something set up to look strikingly similar to Michael Mann's Heat, but what an anti-climax it had turned out to be.As with all testosterone charged action films, most of the female characters were completely relegated to nothing more than token support roles in order to provide that fuel for the guys' relentless drive to do what they have set out to, or is the source of their pain and probable bad judgement calls, save for Michelle Ye's May who plays that tough cookie policewoman who has this insatiable crush for Manfred, but gets to do most of his administrative dirty work. Vivian Hsu though goes back to being a flower vase as Kee's girlfriend Ellen, whom we learn more through other people's conversation about her inglorious past, and Vanessa Yeung an even smaller role as Manfred's wife whom we'll see in brief flashbacks.Sure the storyline does involve yet another mole from within the force who's gone down the wrong path given and causing even more personal turmoil, but it is exactly how each character deals with their problems in opting for the easy way out, and the action sequences here that makes this an above average thriller. I would like it a lot more if not for that really contrived moment of having someone give birth in the middle of plenty of hullabaloo.