city on fire
review
Publisher's Weekly
August 9, 1999
CITY ON FIRE: Hong Kong Cinema
By Lisa Odham Stokes
and Michael Hoover
Verso, 372 pages
The Hong Kong cinema of the '80s and early '90s produced a treasure
trove of films. It made matinee idols of (among others) Chow Yun-fat,
Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung, reinvented genres with style and
generally beat the Hollywood dream factory at its own game with an
"anything goes" attitude - despite tiny budgets and brief
production schedules.
Hoover and Stokes rightly consider the anxiety produced by the ticking
clock to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China as the key to this
period of frenetic activity. In the most serious study to date of Hong
Kong cinema, the authors dutifully ground their account with social,
political, economic, and historical analysis. Sometimes they get a bit
carried away, however: comparing a Harold Lloyd stunt to a Jackie Chan
variant, the Lloyd version becomes emblematic of the ideal of upward
mobility in the American 1920s, and Chan's tumble reflects how
"Hong Kong's dollar fell during a run on the colony's currency in
1983."
The abundance of quotes from Marx and Engels at times makes a cinema
noted for its pure entertainment value sound dull and allegocial. Still,
the book's extensive interviews with major HK players - and detailed
coverage of the comedies and romances that have enjoyed less
international exposure than the now famous action films of Chan and John
Woo - are of outstanding interest.
So tantalizing is the treatment of many of the obscure films that
readers will want scurry to the neighborhood video store in search of
such charmingly translated titles as *Tom, Dick, and Hairy* and *Shogun
and Little Kitchen*.
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