Cheetah on Fire (1992)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Did you people see the same film I saw?

An Exercise In Nonsense

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

There is nothing in "Cheetah on Fire" that you haven't seen many times before (except for a bullet-removal during sex, perhaps!); the "attack on the villain's jungle camp" part that takes up the last 30 minutes or so has been done so many times it could evolve into a genre of its own. Script and production-wise, "Cheetah on Fire" is about on a par with a low-budget straight-to-video American action film starring, say, Dolph Lundgren; with that said, the execution does have a certain made-in-Hong Kong energy. I particularly liked the 3 women in the film: Cheung Man, Fujimi Nadeki, and Carrie Ng. They are all strong, fearless, and equal to the men in both giving and taking hits. Cheung Man, in particular, makes a great action heroine and it is unfortunate that she is written out of the second part of the movie. I also liked (once again) Michael Woods, who looks and acts like a comic-book creation (you could call him "The Black Hulk"). On the other hand, Donnie Yen fans will probably be disappointed, since he has very few fight scenes, the last of which (against Gordon Liu) is so often intercut with action happening elsewhere that there is no flow to it. (**1/2)

"At first, I was a bit surprised at the cast list of this movie. But, of course, Cheetah on Fire was made during the early '90s, where there seemed to be an overabundance of talent, but not enough quality producers, directors or scriptwriters to work with them. Granted, none of the cast (with perhaps the exception of Gordon Liu) are really "A-list" stars, but if you were looking to make an action movie, you could do much worse than the actors assembled here.Which makes the results of Cheetah on Fire a bit disappointing. There is a good deal of action, but it lacks that certain something -- that extra punch -- to set it above other similar films. The action is staged and shot well, and there could have been some classic stuff (such as when Donnie Yen takes on Ken Lo, and then later when he fights Gordon Liu) but it all falls a bit flat. What makes matters worse is that the exposition in Cheetah on Fire is fairly poor.The direction is workman-like at best, and that make the plodding script seem all the worse. When we're supposed to develop sympathy for the characters and care when they are hurt, but all that happens is boredom or laughter, something fell apart in the execution -- much like Cheetah on Fire as a whole. It's not a bad movie. In fact, I had a pretty good time with it because of the abundance of action. It's just that I had fairly high expectations and they were not met. Cheetah on Fire does a good job for a low-budget action movie, but don't expect much more than some decent action sequences."

*Mild Plot Spoilers* Quite frankly, I found the plot of "Cheetah on Fire" pretty confusing. Whether this is a fault in the movie itself or an indication of how bad the dubbing was, I'm not sure. In either case, the dubbing is horrible. Of course, given the general quality of dubbing, that shouldn't come as a big shock to anyone.From what I could glean of the story, the Hong Kong police are chasing a man named Tom Yang, who has stolen a valuable microchip. The CIA is also after him, and they send some of their people after the baddies as well. There's an inevitable culture clash between the Hong Kong police and Donnie Yen's character, a hotheaded American police officer who doesn't play by the rules (TM). Eventually, there's a showdown in the jungles of Thailand, which is somewhat confusing given that both armies are wearing dark green and at times it's difficult to tell who's who. It's not a particularly inspired movie, but it's certainly not terrible either. There's a rather uncomfortable sex scene towards the beginning which, well, wasn't my cup of tea, but maybe other viewers will feel differently. The usual cop-buddy "witty banter" isn't great, but thankfully, it's kept to a minimum. Donnie Yen gets his own theme music, which is funny in that it is reminiscent of softcore porn music. With regard to Yen, his acting is reasonably good, and yes, he definitely looks good in this one too. The fights themselves are good, but rare. There's quite a bit of gunplay, and actual martial arts is given short shrift in its favor. Almost everyone gets to show off their skills a little, though. Other than Donnie Yen, Man "Peggy" Cheung gets some of the better beatdown opportunities. Of course, it's no surprise that the best fight scenes in the movie belong to martial arts master Yen. His climactic fight sequence is an incredible display of his talent and speed, and Donnie seems to barely break a sweat as he lays it down. One fight scene in particular is very disappointing because it takes place in a forest at night. The lighting is terrible and it's difficult to see what's going on. From what I could see, it actually looks like it was a very good fight sequence. You could TELL that people were kicking ass, but you couldn't really SEE it. I hope if they ever remaster this movie they somehow fix that problem, because it looked like a real gem of a fight, with several of the main characters involved. Overall, "Cheetah on Fire" was fairly unremarkable. If you're a Donnie Yen aficionado, if you have a thing for gunplay movies, or if you just want to kill some time, there are a lot of worse ways you could do it. I'd give this movie a 4.5 out of 10.

The producers of "Cheetah on Fire" probably got together and said "Let's make a movie with Donnie Yen, a lot action and fight scenes, and some sex; all we need now is a plot and some music to go with it". The result is an awfully bad movie. Of course, one should not expect a lot of realism from the fighting scenes of HK action movies, but the ones in this movie were so gratuitous, confusing, and boring that even fans of the genre will be disappointed.