HK police thrillers keep audiences on edge of their seats

City's action movies continue to draw crowds on mainland

An old-school Hong Kong action thriller made a surprise name for itself this summer simply by meeting all expectations.

On Aug 26, three days after the first anniversary of director Benny Chan's death, his final feature Raging Fire became the 89th film screened on the Chinese mainland to take more than 1 billion yuan ($155 million) at the box office.

By Sunday, it had earned 1.2 billion yuan and topped the box office for Chinese-language action movies this year. Cinemas have extended the screening period for the movie to Oct 30.

The movie tells a familiar story of an honest cop named Bong, played by Donnie Yen, clashing with Ngor, a former colleague, portrayed by Nicholas Tse. The latter swears to take revenge against Bong and the entire police force after former colleagues testify against him, leading to Ngor being imprisoned for beating a suspect to death.

The film scored 7.5 points out of 10 among more than 246,000 viewers on the mainland movie review platform Douban.

However, high expectations for renowned director Chan's swan song ended in disappointment for some die-hard fans.

One reviewer, who gave the film six points out of 10 on Douban, said, "It was barely a satisfactory work from Benny Chan … and this saddens me."