Review for Dragon Lord (Cine Asia)

Introduction

Pity the plight of kung-fu cinema in the UK. A couple of titles might come out in a year, but it’s pure pot luck as to which label picks them up, and invariably the treatment is questionable. Would that we had a dedicated label catering for Hong Kong cinema and the like... In the past we’ve had two. Unfortunately they wound up as mayflies of the distributor world. First there was Hong Kong Legends, which released all things Martial Arts, and picked up the most renowned titles, and gave them splendid treatment on DVD. That label lasted for a good few years, releasing everything Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li under the sun, and many more titles, branching out into Japanese and Korean cinema as well with a Premier Asia sister label too. Their problem was that they pretty quickly ran out of the vintage stuff to release, and there’s only so many times you can re-release Project A before fans just stop buying it. They were scraping the bottom of the Jackie Chan barrel with Magnificent Bodyguards and Dragon Fist, hyping them up as Ultrabit editions when they faded away into insignificance.


Then from the ashes of Hong Kong Legends rose Cine Asia, with what seemed like a more conservative approach to releasing Asian Cinema, concentrating on more than just the martial arts, and picking up all the epic titles and latest releases from both mainland China and Hong Kong that were coming out in the wake of Crouching Tiger mania. And this time they had Blu-ray to make these new movies look even better. In the process they filled in the gaps in their schedule by revisiting some of the Hong Kong Legends catalogue, upgrading a few to HD where possible, or just ensuring that a few classics remained in print in the UK. Unfortunately they turned out to be even more of a mayfly than Hong Kong Legends, as an attempt to expand into the supermarket retail sector turned out to be a double edged sword when all of a sudden a perfect storm of returns (unsold stock), came and bankrupted the company. And so now we no longer have a dedicated martial arts movie label in the UK. In those final few months of Cine Asia’s existence, they hit the HKL back catalogue in big way, and it proved to be the perfect chance to fill in a few missing gaps in my Jackie Chan collection.


Dragon and Bull are a couple of wayward young men, close friends in mischief, whose primary pastime is taking part in the inter-village martial arts contests, and also avoiding the responsibilities and duties required of sons who must live up to their respectable fathers’ expectations. You’d think that such like-minded men would be fast friends, and you’d be right. Until that is a woman gets in the way. The pretty Lai is making an impression in the village, and soon Dragon and Bull are competing for her attention. And in the background, a smuggling ring is trying to get rich from selling priceless Chinese artworks and artefacts to greedy foreign collectors. An internal dispute gets violent when one of the smugglers disagrees with the plan, and he winds up fleeing for his life... right where Dragon and Bull happen to be poaching pheasant.

Picture

Dragon Lord gets a 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer which is adequate. The image is clear and sharp throughout, print damage and dirt is minimal, and the image is stable. Colours can be a little faded, especially towards the edge of a frame, and there is a fair bit of grain. Most distracting is a lack of shadow detail, particularly in darker scenes, and a poorly placed layer change. The action comes across well though, and this is a film with a lot of inventive action, some ingenious stunt sequences, and it’s well worth watching for those.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 Cantonese, and DD 5.1 English, with optional English, HOH English, and Dutch subtitles. Naturally I ignored the existence of the dub completely, and stuck with the Cantonese audio. It isn’t the best track around, dull and muffled at the best of times, and if your player allows you to adjust the playback, best to get it downmixed to as few speakers as possible. I had it coming through as stereo and it was a tad clearer. The original mono track ought to have been an option though. The subtitling is poor as well, as the disc uses a translucent font that lets half the background colour bleed through, making it harder to read than a bolder font would be. There is an inconsistency in character names as well. Ngau only becomes Bull halfway through the film.

Extras

It’s just the Hong Kong Legends disc repackaged in a Cine Asia box, and with Cine Asia disc art. The logos and menu screens are the same as from the old disc, and so is the transfer of the film, as are the extras.

The disc presents its content with animated menus. Trailers include Project A, Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, and Young Master, which got re-released by Cine Asia, and The Swordsman, Flaming Brothers, and First Option, which did not.

You’ll find a trailer gallery with the UK trailer for Dragon Lord, and a five minute Original Theatrical Trailer.


In the Interview Gallery you’ll find an in depth interview with co-star Mars (30 mins), who talks about his career and making Dragon Lord, an informative interview with production manager Louis Sit (10 mins) about his career in Golden Harvest and working with Jackie Chan, and an incomprehensible interview with Wong In-Sik (12 mins), who played the villain in Dragon Lord. With an accent this thick, English subtitles ought to have been burnt into the print!

There is also an everything about everything audio commentary from Bey Logan, rich and informative, although I’m beginning to doubt the accuracy of some of the information. Here he wheels out the standard Jackie Chan anecdote about how Mars got his stage name, and it totally contradicts what the man himself states in the interview on the disc.

Conclusion

A collection of cool action sequences loosely hanging together by a couple of frayed plot threads. That would be an accurate description for most of Jackie Chan’s output, or indeed any martial arts action movie before Police Story came and drove a destructive saloon car through the steep shanty town of the status quo. But for Dragon Lord that statement is more applicable than usual. Put any thought of character development, story and plot out of your mind, and just pay attention to the cool bits in this film. Thinking about the story is just wasted effort. The presence of a villain is there simply because the films of the era were expected to have one. The film could easily have continued with its silly, jokey, prankster antics from Dragon and Bull all the way through, as they tried to woo Lai, and you would never have noticed the absence of the villain.


You really do watch this film for the kung-fu and comedy action set pieces, whether it’s the kung-fu rugby game that starts the movie, the kung-fu hackysack football game that incongruously takes up ten minutes right in the middle of the film, the spears through the roof bit, the peeing in the river bit, the fooling around with firearms bit. It’s a film of bits, as much a collection of sketches as Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. If there is one thing that I do take away from this film, is how much of a comic talent Mars is. Prior to this film, I’d only seen him as one of the hangers on in Jackie Chan movies, playing second fiddle or stuntman to JC, Sammo and Yuen Biao. Here he has to share the burden of carrying the film with Jackie Chan, has equal billing, and he turns out to be an adept and entertaining performer with just as much screen presence as his co-star.


Dragon Lord is a fairly average Jackie Chan film, it has the comedy, and it has the action, but it’s missing a plot. It’s also got the usual period setting, and the whole rival masters and kung fu style set up, without the actual rival masters and kung-fu training sequences, or the avenging the fallen master climax. Instead it has lazy students failing to do their fathers’ bidding, and protecting said fathers and Chinese heritage set up, which is pretty similar when you think about it. It’s a forgettable movie, but one that I don’t regret watching or buying.