Thanks to omy.sg for the invite to the movie preview. I love a good movie anytime! I dragged Dear Dear to go with me again although he was very tired from work but he loves movies too! 
My invite for 2!
Dear Dear and I waiting for the movie to start!
Didn’t dare to use flash n case it disturbs other movie-goers!
The theatre is slowly filling up!
Dear Dear reading the invite….
Ok i shall go to my little simple movie review now…
Movie Trailer
oh… spoilers ahead ya?
The movie opens with a black and white montage, not of photos but more like a freeze-motion video. I don’t know what’s that called (like “Matrix” kind?) and they were snippets of happenings in the movie which will be explained later on as the show goes on. The part where Leon Lai was standing in a bus and he slowly transforms from a neat and clean shaven man to a haggard man with an unkempt beard as part of the opening was interesting too. It was only towards the end that we got the explanation towards his change and why he was traveling in the bus.
Actually, throughout the whole movie, I was wondering why the movie was titled 《火龙》which translates to “Fire Dragon” in English. All I managed to capture was that both Man Fong (Leon Lai) and Inspector Kee (Richie Jen) was born in the year of the dragon and towards the end, there was the appearance of the traditional fire dragon dance on the streets and Inspector Kee telling Man Fong something about the fire dragon at the end. Still, i didn’t understand what the linkage was. It was only after I did a search then I knew that it is a tradition in Hongkong to have the fire dragon dance and it is believed that the fire dragon will remove all illnesses and diseases. In this case, the fire dragon is something that comes, to remove the disease in the minds of that two man. But…Personally, i still do not really fancy the metaphor used.
Something that I like a lot in this movie is the portrayal of humans in a very three-dimensional way. A 2-D Character will only either consist of either good traits, or bad traits, just like cartoon characters, overly simplified. However, we know that humans aren’t like that. We know that Inspector Kee is the bad guy in this film. But we do get to see the other side of this bad guy. For example, Inspector Kee was portrayed to be faithful and loving to his girlfriend (Vivian Hsu) although she was the likely reason why he couldn’t move up the ranks in his work. He was also very kind to his subordinates and in the scene in the garage, Inspector Kee might have been able to escape the law if he hadn’t hesitated to leave the scene because he wanted to save the pregnant woman. And, this is the very same man that broke the law and caused the death of many. Man Fong is the good guy in the film. But we do see how he abuse suspects and let his anger gets the better of him.
The best part of the show: The ugly and haggard and sloppy one is the “good guy” while the smart and sleek one is the “bad guy”. See, I got to use the inverted commas due the the above paragraph… hahaha… Don’t define someone’s character or work ability by how he or she look and how he or she dresses!
Lastly, let’s talk a bit about the female characters in this movie, mainly two of them. One is Man Fong’s subordinate May (Michelle Ye) who was secretly admiring him and the other is Inspector Kee’s girlfriend, Ellen (Vivian Hsu). As of any testosterone packed shows, the females are supporting roles, but i guess still quite important ones. Ellen was more or less the reason why Inspector Kee chose to do what he did. Vivian Hsu is back to playing the vase in this movie but still, she’s a good one! There’s no other prettier vase!
I love the ending too. The part where Man Fong sat quietly in front of the TV watching the ultrascan of his unborn baby and weeping quietly. That was really impactful. Dear Dear and I both thought the the movie should end there, the parts after that scene was rather redundant.
Theme Song 《烟火》
Sang by Leon Lai and Richie Jen
