Le prisonnier

Story takes place in a prison. Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Sammo Hung and few other stars of the era. The movie is supervised by Jackie Chan's old colleague Jimmy Wang Yu.

The plot is about a prison where the convicts are part of a recruitment program to do special biddings for the government. The selection criteria is not obvious, but it seems that one's who had a fight in the prison and fought well got recruited. Who the true culprit is, and what twist in the plot there is at the end must be seen.

It's one of few movie where Jackie is not the star. There's also a rare fight scene between Jackie and Andy Lau.

It's hard to categorize what this movie is. It's a generic action movie, but there's lot of super A list actors appearing just as a co-star. Unfortunately they are under utilized, and the movie fails to achieve stellar performance it could have had.

Maybe this was movie made based on friends getting together, and chipping in their talents. This would have been possible with someone with Jimmy Wang's clout.

The movie is somewhat of an enigma in Hong Kong movie history.

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.

Deranged, but pretty decent prison drama. Jackie's pretty cool in it, playing a somewhat unlikable character. My favorite though is Sammo Hung, who keeps escaping the prison, just to see his son, and the all-star cast is cool to see. It's not really bad, but the ending comes out of nowhere, even though it is cool to see. Jackie did this one to pay back a debt....

The prisoner is a typical hongkong action movie, with great action but also with exxagerated drama and humour. But if you are a fan like me, you will get used to this if you watch a lot of them. The prisoner is a serious movie with some humour in it. It isn't a jackie chan movie, but it is a movie with jackie chan in it. A serious one, which we don't get to see very often . But in this he is great, especially at the end (Jackie a la John Woo).

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.