Shi wan huo ji

I find this film very hard to describe. The film is about the firemen at a particular firehouse in Hong Kong. They have a reputation for being jinxed and everyone lives in fear of something terrible happening. Indeed the film opens with the crew going en-mass to the emergency room because they all ate tainted food. As time goes on we watch them as they perform rescues and get on with their lives. Its very soapy stuff, well done but very unremarkable (especially considering who the director is). However about an hour into the film it shifts its focus and becomes 45 minutes of some of the tensest action you've ever seen. Director To amps up our nerves as the group of men and women that we have just a great deal of time getting to know, are now trapped inside a burning factory and they have no clear way out. It will rattle your cage.

Its an odd film, and in reality its actually two films the big fire and before. The before stuff is pretty pedestrian stuff and you can pretty much fill in the blanks. However once this film kicks into high gear and the crew is called into action this movie becomes an action classic. Certainly the fire sequence is one of the greatest fire scenes ever put on film. The entire set piece consists of "oh my god"shots as the crew struggles to get out from what is essentially a funeral pyre. Its amazing (and was no doubt cribbed by the makers of Ladder 49). Odds are you'll never have seen anything like this unless you were trapped in a burning factory.

If you love action films you have to see the end of this movie. The first hour isn't horrible, but its nothing special.

7 out of 10.

This is like Backdraft in Chinese. We follow a group of firemen at a big fire station as they struggle with their loved ones, their bosses, making sense of it all, and of course with fires. The film spends the first 35 min. setting up the character and the story, before you even see the first fire. But this means that once you see the fire, you actually care about those involved in it. Around 60 min. into the story, the firemen arrive at a blazing warehouse, where the rest of the film takes place, as they fight with other stations trying to get the `fire of the decade' under control, and save the civilians trapped inside. I was impressed with the fire sequences in Backdraft when it came out, but this blew me away. There aren't as many fire-scenes as in Backdraft, but they are far more realistic, more often than not resembling the clips you might have seen of actual firemen at work. And what's even more surprising is that it's the actual actors performing the stunts (the DVD contains a small featurette that clearly shows this)! Even when the characters are being helplessly engulfed in flames, as they are running for their lives, it's still them! And I'm not talking about quick cuts, no, you this in slow motion: The actor running, the fire going faster, the fire catching up and swallowing the actor, and just when you think it's all over: the actor, with (apparently) the last breath, jumping clear of the flames and to safety. I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone who loves Chinese/Cantonese cinema, but also to everybody else. Because this this is a well shot, well acted, well written film, that - in terms of describing the lives of firefighters - are far more

Beautiful and super-engaging film, in love with the rookie's father, it seems like our family, but the scene where the mother gives her daughter to the father because she's getting married and the husband doesn't accept the girl is beastly and bizarre, until we understand the whole context , and the common and commonplace scene of the man who wants to have sex without a condom for pleasure, ignoring that his wife cannot take medicine, nor get pregnant because of the profession he had recently taken on, excellent drama, and lots of action, and fire in the second half...