Dragon: Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
Liu Jun Xi (Donnie Yen) is a villager that gets pulled into a scuffle with some thugs after the try to rob a local shopkeeper. The scuffle ends with the thugs being killed and eventually gets the attention of Detective Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) after seeing that the men that were killed were some of the most infamous criminals around. Upon further investigation Baijiu comes to the realization that Jun Xi isn’t who he says he is. Who is this mystery man and what kind of trouble has Baijiu uncovered?
This movie starts out exactly like a martial arts film would, with lots of really well choreographed fighting and flying around. After the opening scene is said and done (and it is a good one) it takes a different path that is more like a CSI episode. It was a nice change of pace rather than seeing a movie that is just loaded with fight scenes. It really gave this film some substance. The other good thing about it was that it was also a story of redemption and that’s another surprising quality to this film that seems to have lots of layers. Donnie Yen’s fight choreography was excellent and done with so much precision that even though there was definite wirework in some scenes it would hold up against any “Hollywood” movie. This ended up being a film that will left me saying “Wow, that was actually pretty damn good.”. It’s always a good surprise when a movie can do that to you and send you on a journey of really good twists and turns without over-thinking it. I feel confident about recommending this to my audience and just so you all know, the finale was one of the best I’ve seen in Chinese cinema.
Special Features:
The Making Of Dragon – A really good look at everything that took to make the film including all the risk involved for all the stunts.
Featurettes with Donnie Yen – Yen provides some interesting insight on the film and some of the action shots in the film.
Dragon (Wu-Xia) is available NOW on Blu-ray and DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment
