This is one of those movies that you may have caught playing at about 2 in the morning. Next you realize that this is a good film, gunplay aside the action was pretty good if not great. Yen again shows off his talents in this film.He plays a cop from the US brought in to help with a serious case, his cockiness is backed up by his gunplay and fighting skills. To see him and Gordon Liu go at it in a fight was amazing. Although I didn't like the fate Yen took at the end of the film, it was still decent.A lot of people reviewing this movie are screaming about realism, but yet we praise the Matrix Reloaded and Revolution, (yeah I can really see the realism in those two films)but anyway if you want a good gunplay, azzwhupping, explosion having action movie, then try out this film.What could go wrong, you'll either love it or hate it right?

*Mild Plot Spoilers* Quite frankly, I found the plot of "Cheetah on Fire" pretty confusing. Whether this is a fault in the movie itself or an indication of how bad the dubbing was, I'm not sure. In either case, the dubbing is horrible. Of course, given the general quality of dubbing, that shouldn't come as a big shock to anyone.From what I could glean of the story, the Hong Kong police are chasing a man named Tom Yang, who has stolen a valuable microchip. The CIA is also after him, and they send some of their people after the baddies as well. There's an inevitable culture clash between the Hong Kong police and Donnie Yen's character, a hotheaded American police officer who doesn't play by the rules (TM). Eventually, there's a showdown in the jungles of Thailand, which is somewhat confusing given that both armies are wearing dark green and at times it's difficult to tell who's who. It's not a particularly inspired movie, but it's certainly not terrible either. There's a rather uncomfortable sex scene towards the beginning which, well, wasn't my cup of tea, but maybe other viewers will feel differently. The usual cop-buddy "witty banter" isn't great, but thankfully, it's kept to a minimum. Donnie Yen gets his own theme music, which is funny in that it is reminiscent of softcore porn music. With regard to Yen, his acting is reasonably good, and yes, he definitely looks good in this one too. The fights themselves are good, but rare. There's quite a bit of gunplay, and actual martial arts is given short shrift in its favor. Almost everyone gets to show off their skills a little, though. Other than Donnie Yen, Man "Peggy" Cheung gets some of the better beatdown opportunities. Of course, it's no surprise that the best fight scenes in the movie belong to martial arts master Yen. His climactic fight sequence is an incredible display of his talent and speed, and Donnie seems to barely break a sweat as he lays it down. One fight scene in particular is very disappointing because it takes place in a forest at night. The lighting is terrible and it's difficult to see what's going on. From what I could see, it actually looks like it was a very good fight sequence. You could TELL that people were kicking ass, but you couldn't really SEE it. I hope if they ever remaster this movie they somehow fix that problem, because it looked like a real gem of a fight, with several of the main characters involved. Overall, "Cheetah on Fire" was fairly unremarkable. If you're a Donnie Yen aficionado, if you have a thing for gunplay movies, or if you just want to kill some time, there are a lot of worse ways you could do it. I'd give this movie a 4.5 out of 10.

CHEETAH ON FIRE (1992) is a by-the-numbers thriller about government agents tracking down an errant arms dealer, culminating in a raid on the arms dealer's outpost in the southeast Asian jungle. The action is mostly gunplay but is enlivened by some solid kung fu action performed by hero Donnie Yen and a quartet of memorable villains led by Gordon Liu and including Ken Lo and western martial artists Michael Woods and John Salvitti. The highlight is a fight between Donnie and Gordon (of MASTER KILLER fame and tons of old-school kung fu films), representing two generations of kung fu stars. Also on hand are Carrie Ng and Cheung Man, who are very good at looking pretty, but not so good at fighting. (Carrie's red lipstick lights up the jungle in every scene she's in.) Donnie Yen plays an American, which prompts the others on his team to call him `Foreigner,' one of the few times his actual nationality is acknowledged in a Hong Kong film.

The producers of "Cheetah on Fire" probably got together and said "Let's make a movie with Donnie Yen, a lot action and fight scenes, and some sex; all we need now is a plot and some music to go with it". The result is an awfully bad movie. Of course, one should not expect a lot of realism from the fighting scenes of HK action movies, but the ones in this movie were so gratuitous, confusing, and boring that even fans of the genre will be disappointed.