Dragon (2012)

One of my all time favorites.

Beautiful, moving film.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The name of the film doesn't exactly help in explaining what this is about. Basically what we have here is a film that very much is derivative of "A History of Violence", a North American movie which was quite popular for anyone who may not have heard of it before.What we have is Donnie Yen as our lead who is found out to not be the weak feeble countryman but is hiding a dark secret that may lead to danger for all those he loves. Takeshi Kaneshiro stars as the moral minded detective who opens up a pandora's box with his investigations into Donnie Yen's character.Now this is a film that combines the beauty of big scale Chinese movies with some sublime martial arts choreography, wonderful to watch. Ridiculously good fun but sadly the movie does seem to fail in the last quarter or so, I just guess they didn't know how what to do after all the twists and turns earlier on in the film.It's worth a viewing if you enjoy martial arts, but I feel it will appeal to many others too for the direction, settings, acting and suspense. It's a fine film but could have been much more. Enjoyable enough.

DRAGON, a Chinese remake of Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE with added martial arts action, is a fine-looking film. The period setting is brought vividly to life and the plot moves at a fair old whack, always avoiding cliché in its exploration of a former gangster attempting to lead a decent life as an ordinary family man. Of course, it's a Donnie Yen film, so there are the inevitably lengthy and detailed martial arts sequences which are typically strong and help to lift the movie's entertainment value immeasurably.Elsewhere, the material does feel a little strained at times and the story seems to fall apart as it progresses. The second half is noticeably inferior to the first, and the film seems to be merely treading water up until the final confrontation between anti-hero and villain. Still, the producers deserve kudos for casting martial arts star and genre icon Jimmy Wang Yu (completely unrecognisable these days, it has to be said) as the chief bad guy.In addition, there's a serious and finely-tuned performance from Takeshi Kaneshiro as a detective investigating Yen's background. Kaneshiro's character is somewhat incongruous given the provincial nature of the rest of the movie but Kaneshiro can always be relied upon to deliver carefully mannered performances and his role here proves no exception to that rule.Come the roll of the final credits, I was left feeling mildly entertained by the material, but also slightly dissatisfied, purely because the quality of the action isn't on par with the highs of IP MAN 1 & 2, FLASH POINT and other Yen classics. I've been spoilt by such films, and as a result Dragon felt a little lacklustre, more watchable as an interesting curio than a full-blooded fight flick.

This is not a detailed review, and I am not going to speak to the cultural differences between American story-telling and the various differences which can be found in foreign films generally.This movie has some very Chinese cultural approaches which I appreciate for their differences from the standard American approach.There are many significant themes present in this film. The primary theme is that redemption from past transgressions is never free and can be very expensive.The overall plot and storyline of the movie brought to mind: "Les Miserables", Victor Hugo; and "Crime and Punishment", Fyodor Dostoyevsky.The cinematography reminded me of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Beautifully done.The martial fight scenes were excellently choreographed and very exciting to watch.The language is Chinese with subtitles, However, when I finished viewing the movie, I actually had to ask myself if there were subtitles because they were totally unobtrusive to the film or spoken dialogue.The story is taken from the point of view of a detective investigating the death of two criminals when they attempted a robbery and murder of the shop-keepers in a small town. The detective is the primary story-teller, and also, the narrator for transitions between scenes. The transition from scene to scene is almost totally seamless to the extent that there is no noticeable break.During his investigation of the two deaths, the detective suspects that the hero of the story is not a common laborer, but highly trained in the martial arts. The story centers on his relentless pursuit of the truth regardless of the consequences to the families and community.I classify this film in the same category of the best Chinese films released in recent years: "Hero", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and others I have watched.The only surprise for me was that I haven't found it nominated or receiving any awards in the foreign film category.Respectfully, MJR

I loved this! Kara Hui, Jimmy Wang Yu and Donnie Yen all give absolutely terrific performances, with Yen's perhaps being the best of his career. Lots of wire assist in the martial arts, but it works in the context of the film, and besides... Hui and Wang aren't exactly spring chickens, so its great to see them in anything, much less doing such fine work in such a fantastic film! Plus, as one or two others have noted, though there are martial arts in this movie, I would not exactly call this a martial arts film. Regardless, it is easily among director Peter Chan's best, Chan - of course - also being responsible for HE'S A WOMAN, SHE'S A MAN / COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY / the GOING HOME segment from THREE / and Jet Li's THE WARLORDS).The film also stars Takeshi Kaneshiro. He portrays an investigator who humorously refuses to believe that it was simply accidental, bumbling, good luck that allowed Yen's country bumpkin, Jinxi (intentional wordplay?), to win out in a battle with two notorious murdering thugs. Instead, he believes Jinxi is hiding his martial arts skill (much as TV's Columbo would hide his intelligence), though each time he puts Jinxi to a cruel and painful test, the result is the same... Jinxi proves to be less than he seems, not more. But that's when Kara Hui and Jimmy Wang Yu enter the picture, and they too think that Jinxi is hiding his true identity, and they're willing to murder or maim his loved ones in order to force him to reveal his hand. And speaking of hands, there's a very nice homage to Wang Yu's ONE ARMED BOXER and ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN in the final chapter of this funny and dramatic film.