I refuse to spend any more time on this horrible waste of a perfectly good CD case!

I have to admit there was one small kinda cool thing. If you don’t know where your opponent is, you can put your mirrored shades on the ground to see their position.

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?!

This ones stars Jackie, Sammo, Andy Lau, Tony Leung Ka-Fei, Jimmy Wang Yu, and O Chung-Hung. The film is very underrated and is an extremely well made prison drama, with some good action scenes as well. The movie consists of 5 principle characters whose different lifestyles cross each other in this hell of a jail. Tony is the main character, he plays a cop who goes undercover to find out about the mysterdeath of an assassin who killed his mentor. The strange part is that the man was supposedly executed in this jail 3 months ago. Sammo plays an inmate in the prison who escapes all the time so he can see his son, he is the character you really feel for. Jackie plays a pool shark who is supposed to fix an important pool game for the Triads, he doesn't so they injure his girlfriend. He must earn money to pay for his girlfriend's operation or she will die. He then goes to win money by gambling, but the men think he cheated so he gets in a great fight with this small time hoods, he kills the leader so and he is sent to prison.

Andy Lau plays the brother of the leader who sets himself up to prison so he can get revenge on Jackie. Wang Yu plays the leader of the inmates in the prison, like the speaker of the law in the "Island of Dr. Moreau", who the warden wants to kill off due to the fact that he has more influence on the other inmates than the warden does. The films is loaded with some great emotional scenes, that is the heart of the film. It also has 3 really good Jackie fights to keep the Chan fan happy, as well as an explosive end. The sequel to this film, "Jail in Burning Island" with the same 5 character format as "IOF", is even better than this one. I thought it was the second best film last year, no Jackie though it stars Takeshi Kaneshiro, Nicky, Jackson Lau (from First Strike), Ng Man-Tat, Anthony Wong, Kok Siu-Man, & Chan Chung-Yung. The big secret of this film is that many people don't even realize that the action director for this film is Sammo himself. Watch and enjoy, but try to find "Jail In Burning Island at all cost", that film is 10/10.

There were some other too-contrived-to-be-taken-seriously parts that detract from enjoyment of the movie. In two scenes (Wang Yu eating from the rice bowl and the inmates doing road work), the prisoners act with ridiculous cooperation. Unless every other reference to prison in the history of entertainment is a flat-out lie, the only respect these guys grant each other is reflective of how accommodating their assholes are. And how about the buxom lass with the flat tire? A bunch of hardened criminals (oh, man...bad choice of words...) see a woman for the first time in years, wearing a wet blouse, and instead of gang-banging her they elect Sammo to change her tire while she seeks shelter from the rain. What the fu**!!! Plus, the damn music sucks. Hey Jeff, do you know what movie they ripped it off from? More importantly, do you know WHY the fu** anyone would want to use vacuum cleaner noise like this a SECOND time??? How about some simple harmonica tunes? Economical AND realistic. Besides those factors, there was another that made it impossible to just relax and enjoy the movie: the conditions under which it was made. Those of you who have read the JC Quiz (or the rest of this review, for that matter) have probably noticed my sneering contempt for Jimmy Wang Yu (a.k.a. The Anti-Christ), or at least his style of "business". For those who don't know, Jimmy Wang Yu is an actor and producer who has strong ties with the Triads (Chinese Mafia). After Lo Wei made Jackie a marked man, Wang Yu stepped in on Jackie's behalf and made it safe for him to return to Hong Kong (after starring in the suicide-inducing Robert Clouse film THE BIG BRAWL). To pay off the debt he owed Wang Yu, Jackie appeared in a film he produced and hired Chu Yin-ping to direct: the abysmal FANTASY MISSION FARCE. Now, my own opinion is that Wang Yu should have been made an indentured servant to Chan for the rest of his worthless life after coercing him to participate in such a colossal waste of time, but that's beside the point.

After FANTASY MISSION FARCE, Wang Yu got into the practice of getting major Hong Kong actors to appear in his films by informing them that if they did, he would see to it that certain other members of the Hong Kong Triads would NOT break every bone in their bodies. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but you get the idea..."You think it's a silly film? Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but you're also entitled to your health, and the Triads over at Happyfu** Films might not see it that way." fu** you, asshole! Even if Wang Yu's intentions are good and even though this sort of thing happens frequently in Hong Kong, who in the name of hell-bent fu** appointed this cocksucker Guardian Angel of the Hong Kong Superstars? For those of you who still aren't getting the point, I HATE JIMMY WANG YU! JIMMY WANG YU MUST DIE!! DAMN JIMMY WANG YU!!! fu** HIM, fu** HIM, fu** HIM!!!! Well, anyway, the plot of this movie appealed to me enough so that I would love to see a remake of it...hell, as a future screenwriter and (hopefully) director, maybe I'll do it myself. And, since I've already got my version all figured out from the rest of this review, all I need now is $30 million or so to make it with! Unfortunately, the only probable way to get that kind of money quickly is to give James Cameron a blow job, and unlike every producer in Hollywood right now, I'm not willing to do that.