Tiger Cage

Tiger Cage, director Yuen Woo-ping's take on a modern, urban crime thriller, distinguishes itself from the rest of the streak thanks to a healthy appetite for excess and endangerment. The film's opening shoot-out, when the central narcotics task force are at the height of their powers, is sprawling and relentless. Civilians are caught up in the crossfire as an undercover drug bust spills out onto the streets, before crashing over neon-piped promenades and concrete sprawl. As soon as the police have chased off their quarry, Tiger Cage switches gears to focus in, leadenly, on the forced camaraderie displayed by work acquaintances. The false note these sort of unfunny capers usually strike in similar films actually ends up working in Tiger Cage's favour when it is slowly revealed that several key players within this chuckling department are on the payroll for a heroin smuggling ring. 

As the group dynamic dissipates, the film narrows in on a trio of rookie cops played by Jacky Cheung, Carol Cheng and a young Donnie Yen. Obviously, given that this is film directed by Yuen Woo-ping, Yen is given ample opportunity to shine: his hot-headed plod, Terry, a more than convincing answer to a pair of heavies deployed to massage a dockside drug deal. This is Yen pre-megastardom though, so his high-kicking hold on Tiger Cage is only fleeting. Yen's twirling showcase quickly comes a cropper, suddenly depositing Terry in a situation that is reminiscent of the doomed heroics so beloved of Shaw Brothers great, Chang Cheh. As the stakes continue to ramp up, Tiger Cage only gets meaner and coarser, casually disposing of, apparently, crucial characters and trapping Cheng and Cheung's disgraced fuzz in situations that have more in common with a bloody, Italian horror film than your standard police procedural.

Raging Fire

With Raging Fire, it often feels as if director Benny Chan has managed to pull a fast one. The late Chan, who also co-wrote and produced the film, manages - despite China's much more granular, sociocultural, approach to film and television censorship - to deliver a film full of morally grey characters. Raging Fire presents an abject panic that springs specifically from an inflexible adherence to state scripture both inside and outside the film. Hong Kong's police force is characterised here as an organisation strangled by a mix of procedure and corruption. Hierarchical virtues have been weaponised, used by those who have power to manipulate then obscure, transforming their formerly righteous underlings into tremendously potent threats to social order. 

Although restorative in its conclusion, as mandated by China's National Radio and Television Administration, Raging Fire's route to this victory is characterised by a pitiless approach to action that sees dozens upon dozens of people chewed up then spat out. Donnie Yen plays Cheung Sung-bong, a senior inspector defined by his rigid approach to policing. Cheung's lifeblood is the law, this cop unwilling to bend the rules even when there are clear financial or occupational upsides. Cheung is able to survive despite this obvious handicap simply because he is truly exceptional at his job, able to apply a twisting, body-straining, martial arts technique to batter through entire drug gangs almost singlehandedly. In this sense Yen's hilariously indefatigable character is very much like Judge Dredd, the uncompromising lawman from the pages of 2000 AD. 

Like Dredd, Cheung has a mechanical aspect to him, one that that allows him to instantly make blunt, life-altering decisions whatever the battlefield. He is just that sure of himself. This, in of itself, is entertaining. Cheung navigates Raging Fire with an almost dorkish detachment from his surroundings, our sole insight into his deeper drives is a dreamy fixation on a rain-lashed dockside where a protégé made an error of judgement that completely changed their life's trajectory. We see these moments replayed from the perspectives of both policemen - Cheung remembers himself slogging through a muddy quagmire to reach his colleagues; Nichola Tse's Yau Kong-ngo is instead obsessed with the faulty premise that put him on the pier in the first place. Chan's film suggests - and eventually outright states - that the only thing separating a virtuous policeman and a homicidal madman is a moment of circumstance. After all, both identities are steeped in violence.