Ringo Lam is probably most famous in the U.S. for his film City On Fire . No more than a handful of people in the U.S. have seen it, of course, but it was the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Resevoir Dogs , and that has become firmly entrenched in our film culture. Two equally important films, albiet less known in the U.S., are Prison on Fire and Full Contact , and all three of these films show a very distinctive directorial mark. Lam cares about the psychology of the characters. In City , the story driven by the inner conflict of the undercover cop.
Prison contains probably the only believable prison warden ever seen on film.
Unlike Lam, Woo doesn't go as far into the psychology of his characters. Please put down your flame throwers. I said he doesn't go as far. His characters tend to be archetypes, and their psychology is that of archetypes. This directorial signature appears in all his successful films.