Lifeline

A fire station in Hong Kong. The men on the crew are dealing with divorce, debt, love and promotion; then a large warehouse fire breaks out and the last forty minutes of the film become a single operation. It is not interested in heroism. It is interested in the mechanics of working as a crew: who goes in where, who holds the hose, who refuses to give the order to pull back. The film shows this scene by scene with something close to technical patience. The form splits in two: melodrama in the first half, unbroken action in the second. The fire sequences were shot with real flame in tight spaces, and the camera stays inside the smoke. Johnnie To directed. The film belongs to the founding period of his own company, Milkyway Image, and is one of the occasions on which he stepped outside crime and tried genre cinema through another profession. Lau Ching-wan leads, with Alex Fong and Carman Lee in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like disaster and procedural films and Hong Kong cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the relationship threads of the first half excessive. The film saves its real force for the fire and is scattered until it gets there.