Cinemagic

This 12-chapter book is really thorough in the analysis of the HK cinema. Not a film genre is forgotten and the two first chapters are an introduction that portrays Hong Kong from a historical, geographical and an economical point of view. Each chapter content doesn't follow a sequence of historical events, but grows around a major film, usually characteristic of a particular genre (e.g. A Better Tomorrow is an example of the Heroic Bloodshed genre). This way to deal with such topics sometimes leads to confusion for the reader to appreciate the logical course of ideas within chapters. But City On Fire remains one of the best books on HK Cinema and is essential for aficionados anyway.