General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Fire of Conscience (火龙)

Fire of Conscience (火龙; also released as 火龙对决) is a 2010 Hong Kong action crime thriller directed by Dante Lam, starring Leon Lai and Richie Jen as two police officers whose investigation of a prostitute's murder draws them into corruption within the Hong Kong police force.¹^•² It premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival on March 23, 2010 and opened in Hong Kong and mainland China on April 1, 2010.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Dante Lam; screenplay by Jack Ng (Wai Lun Ng) from Lam's story¹^•⁴
Stars	Leon Lai as Captain Manfred, Richie Jen as Inspector Kee, with Vivian Hsu, Wang Baoqiang, Liu Kai-Chi, and Michelle Ye⁵
Premiere / release	March 23, 2010 (Hong Kong International Film Festival); April 1, 2010 (Hong Kong, China, Singapore)¹^•⁶
Runtime	Reported as 105 minutes by Media Asia and AsianWiki, 106 minutes by several databases, and 110 or 115 minutes by Chinese sources²^•⁶^•⁷
Box office	Hong Kong gross $527,738; worldwide $808,429 across reported territories⁸
Award	Richie Jen won Best Actor at the 2010 Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival; the film was also nominated for Best Film there and at the Udine Far East Film Festival⁹^•¹⁰
Production	Media Asia Films, with China Film Media Asia Audio Video Distribution and Visual Capture⁶

Spoilers

Plot

The investigation of a prostitute's homicide brings together two very different officers: headstrong, heavy-handed Detective Manfred (Leon Lai) and sly Inspector Kee (Richie Jen) of the Narcotics Bureau.² Kee seeks Manfred's help recovering a cell phone containing important information that was stolen by street thugs after his subordinate died in a traffic accident.⁴^•¹¹ After DNA samples belonging to Cheung-on (Liu Kai-Chi), Manfred's partner of many years and a fellow officer, turn up at the scene of the crime and point to him as the leading suspect, Manfred is forced to dig past surface appearances in his search for what really happened.²

Kee's eagerness to help outside his own jurisdiction begins to look sinister: he is secretly colluding with criminals, obstructing Manfred's investigation, and framing Cheung-on for the murder.¹² Manfred, who has been depressed and increasingly volatile since his wife's murder, is suspended as the crises close in, and the two men move toward a violent confrontation.¹¹^•¹³ A parallel thread follows Huang Yong (Wang Baoqiang), a mainland demolition expert forced to work for the gang, whose pregnant wife is held hostage.¹⁴

Title and production

The Chinese title refers to the Tai Hang fire dragon dance, a Hong Kong Mid-Autumn Festival custom traditionally performed to drive away pestilence. Director Dante Lam said the idea for the story came to him while thinking about the fire dragon performance, as he wanted to bring a distinctive Hong Kong element into the film.¹⁵ Actor Richie Jen explained the symbolism on the film's promotional tour: the fire dragon stands for the thoughts inside every person, which, if not controlled, can lead toward destruction.¹⁶ A scene of the fire dragon dance was filmed in Tai Hang with Leon Lai, Richie Jen, and Vivian Hsu during production in 2009.¹⁷

In the film, the fire dragon symbolizes inner demons, ambition, and hatred. The villain Kee is driven by workplace injustice and stock-market losses, while Manfred is consumed by hatred after his wife's killing; the two leads appear to occupy opposite moral poles but are both morally compromised.¹²

The film followed Dante Lam's The Beast Stalker (2008) and continued his run of hard-edged police thrillers, which also included The Stool Pigeon later in 2010.⁶^•¹⁸ Action choreography was by Chin Kar-Lok, with cinematography by Charlie Lam and Tse Chung-To.⁴ Wang Baoqiang, a mainland actor, took a role in a Hong Kong action film for the first time, playing a demolition expert forced to become a human bomb.¹⁵

Release and box office

The film opened in Hong Kong on April 1, 2010 with a first-day gross of HK$350,786, ranking fourth in the local chart behind Clash of the Titans, How to Train Your Dragon, and Beauty on Duty.¹⁹ By its second Thursday its daily take had fallen to about HK$110,000, and the three new Hong Kong films of the Easter holiday were projected to finish with a combined total of only about HK$11 million.²⁰ Box Office Mojo records a Hong Kong gross of $527,738, with smaller totals in Malaysia ($157,880), Singapore ($115,793), and New Zealand ($7,018), for a reported worldwide total of $808,429.⁸ Chinese sources add a mainland cumulative gross of 18.431 million yuan.³

Reception

Critics generally praised the film's craft while faulting its story. Kevin Ma, writing for lovehkfilm.com, called the opening sequence, which floats through black-and-white frozen frames of the incidents that set the plot in motion, a bravura technical achievement, but found that the rest of the film lacks that efficiency: the screenplay's many character backstories weigh down the story, and Leon Lai's brooding performance came off as wooden, while Richie Jen's composed turn as the scheming Kee was far more effective.⁴ The Far East Films review highlighted two standout action sequences, a teahouse shoot-out and a finale that combines gunplay with a brutal one-on-one fight in a burning garage, and concluded that the film shows Lam as one of Hong Kong's most dependable directors of character-driven action, despite a muddled narrative and uneven pace.¹⁴ Elizabeth Kerr of Heroic Cinema found the plot convoluted and judged that the high-octane action and atmospherics carry the film at the expense of its themes of police corruption and brutality.²¹

The Cinespot review rated the film 9/10 and noted that the treatment of both leads as neither fully good nor fully evil was rare in Hong Kong cinema, continuing the morally ambiguous character writing Lam had shown in The Beast Stalker.¹² At the 2010 Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, Richie Jen won the Best Actor award for his performance.⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2010–2014 films › Titles symbols to L

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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