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Sky on Fire
2016; directed by Ringo Lam

Sky on Fire

For the most part, Daniel Wu has been absent from Chinese movie screens for the past couple of years, as he has been working on his hit US television series, Into the Badlands, which has been one of the first productions to successfully integrate kung fu into a drama released for a western TV audience. So, with Wu's skills and popularity at a career high, the anticipation of him returning to China to work with a veteran of Hong Kong film's "golden age" like Ringo Lam sent many fans into a fever pitch. Sadly, the results here are more tepid than white hot, leaving this as yet another disappointing recent release from the region.

Sky on Fire

The basic story revolves around Wu being the chief of security for a company that is developing stem cells to cure cancer. And then there's some bad guys who want the stem cells, except that they're not all that bad, kinda, sorta, really? And then Wu joins them because he is bad, but not really all that bad? Actually, it's incredibly hard to keep track of what is going on and who is affiliated with who, and who exactly the audience is supposed to be cheering for -- and in the end, that means the audience really cares about none of the characters or what is going on.

Sky on Fire

Sure, the action scenes save things to an extent, but after a while, even Ringo Lam says "to hell with it" and the action becomes a jumbled mess of poor coordination, sloppy editing, and awful (and I mean AWFUL) CGI. There is a final shot of someone skydiving near the end of the film that looks about as bad as something would see on the latest installment of the terrible Sharknado franchise, and the fact that it basically drops a deuce on any sort of ethos and emotion squeaked out (intentionally or not) during the finale via the supposed death of one of the main characters is the rotted cherry on the top of this spoiled cinematic sundae.

RATING: 4

Sky on Fire has been released uncut and in the original Mandarin language in North America from Well Go USA. Bonus features include trailers for the movie and other Well Go releases and behind the scenes featurettes. Click here to order the Blu-ray from Amazon, or you may also click here to watch the movie now via their VOD service.

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