Originally posted in September, 2009. Here's a movie review for one of my ten favorite movies of all time. This is probably the greatest movie I've ever seen in my entire life. "School On Fire" is a nihilistic and ugly story about Hong Kong's triad society (aka Mafia or Organized Crime Element) and it's influence on high school teenagers in Hong Kong. A teenage girl makes the mistake of "snitching" to the police about an involuntary manslaughter involving two different triad societies. A nasty triad businessman/entreprenuer named "Smart" (played by Roy Cheung) turns her entire life inside out. This 1988 masterpiece directed by Ringo Lam was censored heavily and to date is missing 36 scenes. At first, Hong Kong's censorship board wanted to ban the film entirely, but released it with 36 cuts missing. The movie contains lots of profanity, scenes of extreme violence, abuse, drug use, sexual references and a mild rape scene, all of which is remarkable even by today's standards. Fortunately for me, I own the uncut version on an old VHS tape. Though the film is released on DVD, it is still edited and diluted. Though I personally like to call it "The Scarface of Hong Kong", the story is more reminescent of "New Jack City", "187", "City of God" and even "Battle Royale".