Brian T

Gone WAY too soon. Gave us MANY classics of Hong Kong cinema: Full Contact, Full Alert, Burning Paradise, City On Fire, School On Fire, Prison On Fire. His subsequent U.S. films were generally beneath his talents (though Maximum Risk has some small moments of worth), and most of his work after returning to Hong Kong and later (ugh!) Mainland China was pretty pedestrian, capped now, sadly, by the woeful Sky On Fire.

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/r...re-1203096650/

Nick Danger

I liked his old HK movies. I never saw any of the Hollywood ones. So I think I've liked every one of his movies that I've seen.

DJariya

Looking at Ringo's filmography, I've seen:

Replicant
Maximum Risk
Full Contact
Twin Dragons
Prison on Fire. I don't think I've seen the sequel
City on Fire

He's not really one of the bigger name directors from HK, so I'm sure many here haven't really heard of him.

Replicant was probably my favorite of the ones he did with Van Damme. You can actually see that one on Amazon Prime. It's a very underrated sci-fi action thriller.

cultshock

That sucks, I didn't see much of his Hollywood work but enjoyed many of his HK films, Full Contact is my favorite of his, great film. RIP.

Mondo Kane

Same.

Norm de Plume

Yeah, Full Contact is one of the best HK actioners this side of Woo. Lam studied film at York U. here in Toronto, where my dad taught (not film).

Ash Ketchum

Totally agree with you on REPLICANT. I was surprised at how good a performance Van Damme gives. Lam made an actor out of him.

LorenzoL

Norm de Plume

Full Alert is also a good action flick that shouldn't go unmentioned in discussing Lam's directorial output.

Brian T

Checked this one in my original post, and for me it was the last truly great film he made. I was kinda disappointed that nothing afterward came close to that achievement -- LOOKING FOR MR. PERFECT was the obvious low point -- but many of them were very good in their own ways, including his immediate followups SUSPECT and VICTIM and especially the more recent WILD CITY.

I'm curious to see how far he got with his segment of the upcoming anthology film EIGHT & A HALF, which teamed him up with a crew of Hong Kong industry heavyweights (Ann Hui, Sammo Hung, Patrick Tam, Johnnie To, Tsui Hark, John Woo and Yuen Wo-Ping) to explore the history of that great city. I kinda suspect the film is an attempt by this elite group to jump on the recent bandwagon of local films made by new local filmmakers dealing with issues effecting local audiences -- such as the phenomenal TEN YEARS -- that has risen up while far too many of the bigwigs were selling their souls to Mainland China. But hey, as long as they're back home, more power to them!

Lam was indeed one of the better directors in Van Damme's career -- particularly out of the three Hong Kong vets who used him in their attempts to break into the U.S. market -- even if the films never hardly major career advancements for either of them. I actually thought IN HELL was the best of their three collaborations, although MAXIMUM RISK still as the best action sequences (presumably due in part to being a larger-budgeted studio picture).