Many thoughts ran thru my head as I watched it. Way beyond the realm of which I would use in a Toronto Film Scene review.
While I was searching for Lam trademarks, and comparing this to all of his other films that I'd seen the entire time I was watching. My thoughts also strayed to how he's never received the same international acclaim as some of his peers, who together built the HK Action Genre from the ground up in the 80's and 90's.
I'm not fact checking here so hopefully my adolescent memories aren't way off, but masters such as John Woo, Tsui Hark, Johnnie To, and Ringo Lam made the genre what it was. So isn't it worth noting that Lam's name usually falls to the wayside as we discuss the waning genre?
The film I probably remember most as a child was Prison on Fire, which was I undoubtedly too young to be watching, but it was the 90's so such a notion didn't exist. (Yay!) I remember that while I comprehended what was happening on the screen, I was also looking to the adults in the room for reactionary cues.
Of course now City on Fire is the film in which I like to discuss at great length (despite not having seen it in some years now). Once the topic of hot debate whether it merely influenced Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs or whether QT blatantly ripped it off, even that's largely forgotten now.
I guess the bottom line is, I'm glad to see Ringo Lam still writing and directing, staying true to his tales and style, and overall staying in the game. Sky on Fire was nostalgic for me in some ways, not just by way of its title, and while his stories and films will never be flawless, I have a certain fondness for them.
Here's a pretty good bio of Ringo Lam including his Toronto connection: http://www.hkfilm.net/ringo.htm
Here's a more in-depth review of Sky on Fire than what I turned out for TFS, that largely arrives at the same opinion that I did: https://asianfilmstrike.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/sky-on-fire-2016-review/
