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Posts Tagged ‘Ringo Lam’

Replicant

Monday, July 17th, 2023

REPLICANT is the second of three collaborations between director Ringo Lam (FULL CONTACT) and star Jean-Claude Van Damme. The first was the theatrically released MAXIMUM RISK (1996), then this came out in 2001, then IN HELL in 2003. I’m pretty sure I watched this when it first came out and thought it was boring, but I’m a different person now. A replicant of what I was before. Or just older, I guess. But the difference is that now I’m much more appreciative of JCVD the adventurous character actor, and this is one where that side of him really shines.

MAXIMUM RISK gave him a dual role, but not at once – he was a guy who dies at the beginning, then he plays his twin. In this one he plays both the antagonist and one of the protagonists, and they’re both fun characters for him to play. (read the rest of this shit…)

In Hell

Thursday, January 30th, 2020

IN HELL is a 2003 DTV JCVD joint. At the time it was the best 2000s Nu Image/Millennium filmed-in-Bulgaria DTV movie with an action icon getting locked up in a Russian prison, meeting a guy in a wheelchair who shows him the ropes, being mistreated and strung up outside in the cold, and becoming the champion of their fighting circuit. (Then UNDISPUTED II came out.) It’s Van Damme’s last film with director Ringo Lam (CITY ON FIRE, FULL CONTACT), following MAXIMUM RISK and REPLICANT. I like that some of the Hong Kong visual style and emotional sincerity come through, even though I could use fewer scenes where he rolls around in bed remembering flashes of his wife’s murder. (read the rest of this shit…)

City On Fire

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

CITY ON FIRE, a 1987 Hong Kong crime movie by director Ringo Lam, is a vehicle for Chow Yun Fat’s charm. He’s not a God of Pistols, he’s one of these fuckup characters who loves the ladies but does pretty terrible with them. In a restaurant he argues with two different women, one I thought was his wife and the other his mistress, but that later seems to be wrong. Anyway one of them seems to be leaving him for an older guy who owns the restaurant, so he gets into a confrontation and a brawl.

The cops bring him in for what seems like questioning but is actually a meeting. It turns out he’s an undercover cop, or at least he was, but he doesn’t want to do it anymore. His boss pushes him into it, so he gets a couple guns out of a bowling alley locker and sells them to a gang of jewel thieves.

(read the rest of this shit…)