Two of the action genre’s most innovative pioneers, going head to head in a bloodied double feature of explosive proportions.

First up, we travel over to Hong Kong for Ringo Lam’s chokehold masterpiece, PRISON ON FIRE from 1987. Chow Yun Fat stars as one of many prisoners in a brutal Chinese prison, forced into a grueling daily mix of back-breaking labor, inhospitable living conditions, and the constant paranoia that one of the prison’s roving gangs could jump you at any minute; that is, until he decides enough is enough, rousing the inmates to a hard-hitting, bone-crushing climax to destroy the powers that be. 

Next up, John McTiernan’s fiery and hyper-kinetic remake of ROLLERBALL from 2002, starring Chris Klein, LL Cool J, and Rebecca Romijn. Updating the still-relevant William Harrison script for the nu-metal era, McTiernan’s take on the material transcends the original’s high-minded intellectual predilections for a two-fisted gut-punch to the media elite, in an effort to incite the Jnco generation to rebellious violence. 

Join us for a night celebrating the cinematic overthrowing of our brutal overlords, a ruling class clumsily entangled in our corrosive media atmosphere and inhumane prison systems. 

7pm - Dir. Ringo Lam, 1987, 98 min., 35mm (Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive)

8:50pm - Dir. John McTiernan, 2002, 98 min., 35mm