Fire of Conscience (Dante Lam, 2010): China

Reviewed by Rhys Davis. Viewed at the Metro 4, SBIFF 2011.

I went out to see Fire of Conscience at this years Santa Barbara Film Festival because it was the only action movie out of the whole lineup. Dante Lam presents us with an action packed thrill ride with plenty of gunfights and explosions along the way. I found the movie entertaining though the ending had a completely ridiculous element mixed in.

Leon Lai stars as Detective Manfred, a man who is mourning his dead wife, and not taking it very well. He drinks day & night and sleeps out of his car. His assistants help him out as best they can, but nothing seems to help his depression. Detective Manfred gets called out to a murder scene where a prostitute has been killed. While investigating the crime scene Manfred crosses paths with the regional police chief Kee (Richie Ren), and the two end up working together after a serious downtown shootout. Kee and Manfred work together through shootouts and busted drug deals, but Kee is playing both sides and the roof is slowly coming down on him. Manfred thinks Kee is a straight shooter, but Kee is caught up in a major blackmailing scheme that invloves the people their going after. Action ensues throughout the film and it does not quit until the last minute.

The action scenes are really well done in the film. The opening sets up the movie with the camera moving through a frozen scene where a man is stabbing a police officer in the neck, and several other crimes are going on at the same time outside a shopping center. It looked great and  helped individualize the film from the start. The explosions are great, and are done in many assorted ways. One part that stood out to me was the amount of grenades that were used in every single gunfight, it was out of control.

I did not find the storyline that captivating. Nothing stood out as original, except for the ending, which I wont spoil, but is way over the top of reality. When the audience should have been wide eyed and breathless, they were laughing at the climax of the film because of how ridiculous it was. Besides that though things were not too out of control.

The action was great, the acting good, and the storyline nothing to talk about, but all in all this film is worth seeing if you want to see a bunch of explosions and massive gunfights with an array of different weapons in downtown Hong Kong.