Lip pau hang tung

There is nothing in "Cheetah on Fire" that you haven't seen many times before (except for a bullet-removal during sex, perhaps!); the "attack on the villain's jungle camp" part that takes up the last 30 minutes or so has been done so many times it could evolve into a genre of its own. Script and production-wise, "Cheetah on Fire" is about on a par with a low-budget straight-to-video American action film starring, say, Dolph Lundgren; with that said, the execution does have a certain made-in-Hong Kong energy. I particularly liked the 3 women in the film: Cheung Man, Fujimi Nadeki, and Carrie Ng. They are all strong, fearless, and equal to the men in both giving and taking hits. Cheung Man, in particular, makes a great action heroine and it is unfortunate that she is written out of the second part of the movie. I also liked (once again) Michael Woods, who looks and acts like a comic-book creation (you could call him "The Black Hulk"). On the other hand, Donnie Yen fans will probably be disappointed, since he has very few fight scenes, the last of which (against Gordon Liu) is so often intercut with action happening elsewhere that there is no flow to it. (**1/2)