General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Raging Fire (怒火)

Raging Fire (怒火·重案) is a 2021 Hong Kong action crime film directed by Benny Chan, starring Donnie Yen as a police senior inspector who confronts his former protégé, an ex-officer turned criminal played by Nicholas Tse. It was Chan's final film; he died of nasopharyngeal cancer on 23 August 2020, aged 58, while the film was still in post-production.¹ The film opened in mainland China on 30 July 2021 and in Hong Kong on 19 August 2021, and went on to win Best Film, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Action Choreography at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Benny Chan; screenplay by Chan, Ryan Ling and Tim Tong³
Stars	Donnie Yen (Cheung Sung-bong), Nicholas Tse (Yau Kong-Ngo), Qin Lan³
Release	Mainland China 30 July 2021; Hong Kong 19 August 2021; US limited release 13 August 2021²^•⁴
Runtime and language	About 126 minutes; Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles⁵^•³
Box office	Over RMB 1 billion in mainland China; HK$26,374,851 from 414,423 admissions in Hong Kong⁶^•⁷
Hong Kong Film Awards	8 nominations at the 40th edition; won Best Film, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Action Choreography³
Critical scores	90% on the Tomatometer (52 reviews); Metascore 72; IMDb 6.5/10⁴^•⁸^•⁹

Spoilers

Story

Cheung Sung-bong (Donnie Yen) is a hardline, incorruptible senior inspector in the Regional Crime Unit with a long record on dangerous cases. After he refuses to collude with senior officers on another matter, his squad is left out of a major operation against an international drug trafficker; when they arrive belatedly, a masked gang has killed officers and stolen the drugs.¹⁰^•¹¹

The gang's leader is Yau Kong-Ngo (Nicholas Tse), once a rising police star and Bong's protégé. Years earlier, Ngo and several colleagues beat a suspect to death during a secret operation, believing their superiors would protect them; instead they were prosecuted and imprisoned. On release, Ngo leads his fellow ex-officers in a campaign of robberies and killings against the force that discarded him, setting the two former comrades on a collision course.¹⁰^•³ The story builds through shoot-outs, car chases and hand-to-hand combat to a final fight between the two men in a run-down church.¹²

Production and Benny Chan's final film

Benny Chan was a veteran of Hong Kong police action cinema, with credits including Big Bullet, New Police Story and Call of Heroes.¹²^•¹⁰ He wrote, directed and produced the film, with Donnie Yen as co-producer and action director and Kenji Tanigaki as stunt coordinator.¹³ Chan died of nasopharyngeal cancer on 23 August 2020 during post-production, and Raging Fire became his posthumous final work.¹ At a Shanghai press conference before release, Yen and Tse both wept as they remembered him.¹⁴

The production used a 40,000-square-foot film studio on which the team built streetscapes of Peking Road and Canton Road to real proportions, and the film was cited as a demonstration of how sets and computer-generated effects can extend Hong Kong-style action filmmaking.³

Reception

Critics received the film as a throwback to the Hong Kong action cinema of the 1980s and 1990s associated with directors such as Ringo Lam, Johnnie To and John Woo. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 90% Tomatometer from 52 reviews, and its Metacritic score is 72, in the "generally favorable" range.⁴^•⁸ Reviewers singled out the action staging, including a gunfight on Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui and the climactic church fight, while noting that the screenplay is crude and the drama secondary to the set pieces.¹²^•¹⁰ The Guardian's review judged that Tse's vengeful villain, an almost tragic figure betrayed by the system he served, has more depth than Yen's upright hero.¹²

Box office and awards

Released into a summer season subdued by the pandemic, the film became a commercial standout in mainland China, passing RMB 1 billion in ticket sales.⁶ In Hong Kong it earned HK$26,374,851 from 414,423 admissions during a 76-day run from 19 August to 2 November 2021.⁷ Well Go USA gave it a limited US theatrical release on 13 August 2021 and handled home media and streaming.⁴^•¹⁵

At the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards the film received eight nominations, including Best Film and Best Director, and won four awards: Best Film, Best Director (awarded posthumously to Chan), Best Film Editing, and Best Action Choreography for Donnie Yen, Ku Huen-chiu, Kenji Tanigaki, and Li Chung-chi.³ Tse's original song for the film, "Dead Lock" (對峙), was also nominated for Best Original Film Song.³ Earlier, the Hong Kong Film Critics Society named it a Recommended Film and gave Chan its Best Director award, and the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild named it Best Film.¹⁶ The London East Asia Film Festival opened on 21 October 2021 with Raging Fire at ODEON Luxe Leicester Square as a tribute to Chan, the first time a Hong Kong film opened the festival.¹⁷

Legacy

The film arrived when observers questioned whether Hong Kong's action industry could still produce a police thriller with the physical craft of its peak decades. Commentators read it as both a continuation and a summation of Chan's career and of the classic Hong Kong cop thriller, pairing two stars in opposed moral positions and resolving their conflict through cars, bullets and fists.¹⁸ A separate, unofficial spiritual sequel, Raging Havoc (怒火漫延), with Nicholas Tse among its cast, has been announced but not released.¹⁹

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) › 2020–2022 films › Released 2020 to 2021

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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