Ringo Lam Ling-tung, who died in 2018, was best known for his early films like the trendsetting City on Fire.
Here we look at two of Lamโs lesser-seen mid-period works.
1. Victim (1999)
Victim was an attempt by Lam to inject his crime thrillers with a new dimension: the supernatural.
This was not a completely new genre for Lam; his 1983 movie debut Esprit Dโamour was a romantic ghost story. But since the success of 1987โs City on Fire, he had concentrated mainly on gritty crime stories.
The film, which stars Lau Ching-wan, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Lauโs real-life partner Amy Kwok Oi-ming, still unspools like a standard cops-and-robbers story. But Lam buries some spooky elements in the narrative to make the viewer think there may be aspects of demonic possession at work.
โIโd been thinking about moving away from pure crime for some time,โ Lam told critic Derek Elley in 1999, noting that he was a fan of horror classics like The Exorcist and The Omen.