Burning Paradise

Pretty brutal even by Ringo Lam standards. It plays liberally with the Buddhist tropes for hell, but even then, it’s not often you see a statue of Buddha mow down his disciples with machine guns. The prison warden got the memo about pulling a Cool Hand Luke, but he also gets to be a necrophiliac and rapist making deadly kung fu paintings. There are like 20 minute fight sequences over flames and spikes. I’d double this with Mindwarp for pure hellscape immersion.

I don’t think anybody would need the comedy bits (most likely producer Tsui Hark‘s contribution) if they weren’t there, but the action is fresh and the action cool and visceral, so I can’t complain all that much.