"Island of Fire" is a fairly average prison-type of movie in regards to the story, but there is just something captivating about it.

Andy (played by Tony Leung Ka Fai) goes undercover to infiltrate a rough prison run by corrupt officers using the prisoners to run fights and do their dirty work.

As a prison movie, of course you have all the standard stereotypical characters here; the mafia-type overhead in charge of the inmates, the ruffians serving the overhead, the innocent prisoners rising up when cornered, the prisoners fueled by a fight for righteous. There is nothing grand or new to the characters, and truth be told, there is very little room for character development in the movie, and you hardly get to sympathize for any of them or dig into their stories.

The movie is driven by the story and the raw action, though. And I must admit that it was nice to see Andy Lau actually play a bad guy for a change. And even more of a surprise towards the end to see both Steve (played by Jackie Chan) and Boss Lee (played by Andy Lau) getting gunned down and presumably die. And another plus is that you actually see Jackie Chan in a violent role and is killing people!

There are some pretty heavyweight Hong Kong movie stars in "Island of Fire". You have Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Ka Fai, and of course Jackie Chan.

I bought the Hong Kong Legends release of the movie and it has Jackie Chan on the cover, so I was under the impression that it was a regular Chan movie. But it turned out not to be the case, and he actually only have a minor role in the movie. But of course, his name and face sells, so why not put him on the cover? Although names like Sammo Hung, Andy Lau or Tony Leung Ka Fai would sell equally well (perhaps not to the Western market, though).

And whatever you do, do not watch this movie with the English dubbed soundtrack, it is just awful. Watch it with the original Mandarin language, I switched to that upon hearing the first English being uttered. I just hate dubbed versions, especially badly dubbed versions.

"Island of Fire" is a great movie, despite it being from 1990. It is driven by a captivating story and some good acting performances actually. And if for nothing else, watch it because of the Hong Kong heavyweight stars that are in it.

These comments are based on watching the English language US version of the film.

After his friend is assassinated policeman Andy Lau is surprised to discover that the killer's fingerprints match those of a convict who had apparently been executed recently... either something is wrong with the computer records or something is very wrong at the prison. As it doesn't appear to be the former he agrees to go undercover in the prison to uncover the truth. The prison is a brutal place and Andy has nobody to go to if he gets in trouble. In the prison we are introduced to other key characters; John 'Fatty' Liu, who keeps escaping to visit his son; Steve, who is marked for death because he accidentally killed a crime boss's brother and Lucas, the unofficial leader of the convicts.

I don't know if it was just the version of the film I watched but it certainly seemed rather lacking. The most obvious weakness is that once in prison Andy barely bothers to investigate; he asked a few questions about the late assassin, got in trouble with Lucas, then he was just another prisoner who gets caught up in a few scrapes. Jackie Chan is sold as the lead actor but in reality he plays a secondary character; we do get to see some of his trademark action, which is rather fun, at least. Sammo Hung provides some of the film's more amusing moments as John. There is a reasonable amount of action; the regular fight scenes are pretty good but the shootouts are a bit unrealistic to say the least. The acting looked good enough but the dub is pretty poor; none of the voices really went well with their characters making them hard to believe in. Overall I'd only recommend watching this version of the film if you are desperate to see it and can't find a Chinese version with subtitles.

this action flick is solid entertainment, it has Jackie Chan,sammo hung,Andy lau, tony leung, jimmy Wang yu, its a prison movie and it has all the usual cliché's but it also has some fantastic fights scenes, and a brilliant shoot out at the end, it isn't' the best movie that these actors have starred in but it's a solid one none the less, and Jackie Chan ain't no fool here he's a hard boiled man with a short temper, sammo hung is a loving farther and jimmy Wang yu the top dogg, i like the movie because it tries to be more than just a prison movie and succeeds, it's similer in tone to a john woo movie but with less gun play. it's an ensemble movie and all the cast get their big moment,but no one here is really a main star, everybody is equal, it's not the best action movie out there but it's a damn entertaining one.