Ringo Lam Ling-tung (23 October 1955 – 29 December 2018), whose family came from Chaozhou in Guangdong, was a Hong Kong film director and actor and a protégé of director Wong Tin-lam. He grew up in Tin Wan Estate in Aberdeen, where his mother ran a noodle stall, and graduated from St Peter's School in Aberdeen in 1968. After finishing secondary school at St Peter's in 1973 he joined the third acting class of Television Broadcasts Limited, appeared in the anthology series Ancient Tales of the Common People, became an assistant producer in 1974 and a director in 1976, working on series such as A House Is Not a Home; in 1978 he joined Commercial Television to make the crime serial The Avenger, then emigrated to Canada to study film at York University. Returning to Hong Kong in 1982, he made his directing debut with Esprit d'Amour (1983), starring Alan Tam. Known for action films and a style described as violent realism, he is best remembered for his On Fire trilogy. His 1987 City on Fire, starring Chow Yun-fat, won Chow the Best Actor prize at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards and earned Lam Best Director at the same ceremony; Prison on Fire that year took more than HK$31 million and led his elder brother Lam Ling-nam to become the professional screenwriter known as Nam Yin, while School on Fire also fared well. He went to Hollywood to direct Jean-Claude Van Damme in Maximum Risk (1996) and returned to new heights with Full Alert (1997), which won the Hong Kong Film Critics Society award for best film. In 2007 he co-directed Triangle with Tsui Hark and Johnnie To, made Wild City in 2015 and released Sky on Fire in 2016, his last film in his lifetime; his segment in Septet: The Story of Hong Kong appeared afterwards. He died at his home in Ma On Shan on 29 December 2018, aged 63, and was remembered at the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2019.
The undercover set-up of City on Fire was borrowed by Quentin Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs, drawing international attention to Hong Kong crime cinema. His 'On Fire' trilogy used unsparing violence to capture 1980s social unease, influencing a generation of local crime directors.
Achievements
- 1983 · Made his directorial debut with Esprit d'Amour
- 1987 · Directed City on Fire and Prison on Fire, winning Best Director at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards for City on Fire the following year
- 2016 · Directed Sky on Fire, the last of his films to be released during his lifetime