Now they are back with a bang with the comic adaptation "Dragon Tiger Gate" and "Fatal Contact", starring "SPL" bad guy Jackie Wu Ching.

The story of the film is not of the very original sort but it gets the job done to hold together the various fight sequences. And those are some of the best to come out of Hong Kong for quite some time.

Most of the fight sequences are very realistic in choreography and very well photographed. Jackie Wu handles these scenes with a coolness and agility that makes you remember Jet Li in his good old days in Hong Kong. Jackie Wu even makes a joke about it in one scene of the film where he says to his girlfriend, "If I learn hard enough I can be the new Jet Li". Well he could be right about it, did he go to the same training school as Jet Li.

It's not very understandable why he was not cast in more movies, his first starring role was in the 1996 follow up to Jet Li's "Tai Chi Master", "Tai Chi 2" ,an entertaining martial arts comedy from director/choreographer Yuen Wo Ping. After that he disappeared for quite some time, then he showed up once again in Tsui Hark's "Legend of Zu" in 2001, where his skills where hardly used and his role was also little more than a cameo.

It seems that his talents had to be recovered once again and when Wilson Yip cast him as the white dressed knife wielding bad guy in "SPL" his hour had come and "Fatal Contact" marks his first leading role in a long time. Let's hope that this time he will get the recognition he deserves and can show his impressive martial arts skills in more action flicks to come and let the world know that there are still some martial arts fighters in Hong Kong who are on par with Tony Jaa.

Also starring is "Stephen Chow wannabe" Ronald Cheng, an actor I personally did not appreciate very much in his past movies--instead of giving his own comedic style to his movies he tries too hard to copy Stephen Chow all the time, an attempt that is as impossible as it is also useless. Surprisingly he delivers a good performance here and even shows some martial arts skills, and he handles them very well. I hope in his following movies he will also rely more on his own skills as an actor and tries not so hard impersonating Stephen Chow. All in all this movie needs to be seen and its also a good example to show that Hong Kong action movies are back. Check it out!!!

These cameos were a favor for his long time friend Jimmy Wang Yu, who helped him solving the troubles he had back in the early 80's when Jackie was threatened by the triads who tried to push him into new contracts with Lo Wei.

"Island of Fire" (or "The Prisoner", as it is also named in some countries) is surely Jackie's most brutal and gripping film in his entire career.

The story is about a prison somewhere in Taiwan where prisoners who faced death penalty soon after their "death's" reappear as assassins. After they succeeded the are killed by bombs in their getaway cars.

A police inspector, played by Tony Leung Ka-Fei, tries to investigate these strange deaths and goes to prison undercover. What he finds there is corruption, violence and inhuman conditions he would never had dreamed of. He also finds friends like Sammo Hung, who plays a depressed father who allways tries to escape to visit his little son, Jimmy Wang Yu, who seems to be the leader of the prisoners and keeps things running smooth.

Jackie's character appears about 20 minutes into the film as Hammer. He is put to jail for accidentally killing a man after a poker game when they refused to pay him his winings. What Hammer didn't know,he killed the brother of a powerful Triad-Leader (Andy Lau),who then also let himself be put in jail in order to kill Hammer.

After many brutal fights,they are sentenced to death and are executed, but to the surprise of them, they are not dead. They were chosen by the evil prison ward to kill a gangster boss on his way to trial. They are promised to be free once they fulfil this mission.

What follows is a finale in the best John Woo tradition as they, dressed in white t-shirts and black jackets, shoot their way through a whole army.

The movie ends with a shocking and absorbing scene...

Director Chu Yen Ping ("Fantasy Mission Force", "Pink Force Commando", "Butterfly and Sword") delivers with "Island of Fire" probably his best film to date. With a coherent plot, bloody action scenes, an all-star cast--that includes Andy Lau, Sammo Hung, Jimmy Wang Yu, Jackie Chan, and Ko Chun Hsiung, who all deliver powerful performaces--this film guarantees for first rate viewing from start to finish.

Specially mentioned should be the fact that the Taiwan version of "Island of Fire" runns approximately 30 minutes longer than the Hong Kong version. These additional scenes give the film much more depth and tension and also help to understand some characters better.

The Hong Kong version works fine as well, but I reccomend the Taiwan Version.

Another note to mention is the fact that Jackie Chan disliked the film because he feared it would affect his carrer negativley and thus he bought the rights of the film to stop it being released any further.

Despite this, it's without doubt, in my opinion, one of Jackie's finest films and should not be absent from any collection.

In 1997 Chu Yen Ping directed a "sequel" called "Jail in Burning Island", starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anthony Wong. The movie is not very well known and was released in Hong Kong on Laserdisc only. It looks also to be heavily cut in some scenes but its still an okay sequel. Would be interesting to know if there exists a full uncut version in Taiwan?!