"All Stars" Prison
Island Of Fire, particularly by starring Tony Leung Ka-Fai, takes advantage of the success of Ringo Lam Ling-Tung's Prison On Fire, while showing a few clichés from several us "jail movies", mostly Escape From Alcatraz. However, as bad as it can sound, thanks to an impressive cast and a few powerful scenes, the film manages to make you spend a rather good time.
Tony Leung, taïwanese cop, decides to go undercover inside a prison in order to investigate the death of his mentor.
In the same time, Jackie Chan, brilliant pool player, winds up in jail after a tortuous and dramatic serie of events that unwillingly led him to murder. Andy Lau Tak-Wah, mobster and big brother of the one Jackie accidentally killed, settle things to be put in jail in order to execute his retaliation himself.
All those guys end up in the same dark prison where you also find Samo Hung Kam-Bo, as an old timer of this place and Jimmy Wang Yu as the dark boss of the prison, the kind to slick his hairs with an egg and to slash his arm in order to calm down those dying for revenge...
The cast is indeed impressive and maybe even too much, as each one's stories are clumsily mixed together.
Because except for Tony Leung who clearly is the main character, each one has the same time in front of the camera however "custom-filmed". Indeed : Samo Hung plays his usual clown who yet becomes most touching the time of a scene with his son where he takes off the red nose, typical Samo ; Andy Lau 
plays the handsome yet though guy, nothing new ; while Jackie indeed appears in a dark and unusual role but doesn't forget to fill his part with typical "Jackie" fights which are as usual very good, but here, totally not in line with the rest...Even Jimmy Wang Yu seems to come right out from an old "though guy" role of his.
Thus, despite a good performance from each one, it seems that Jackie's out fom Crime Story (which he disavows today by the way, just as much as this Island Of Fire), Samo from a sort of action Eight Taels Of Gold, Andy from one of
his Rich & Famous, etc...All of this is unfortunately reinforced by the fact that everything was shot in disorder to end up quite poorly edited, which definitely destroy what's left of some unity in the movie.
In Brief, an all-stars cast sometimes implies an irregular treatment as each one tries to steal as much attention as they can. However, it doesn't keep Island Of Fire from being an quite dark but enjoyable movie which depicts (with some cliche, alright) the prison world. A rather enjoyable movie.
