The Invincible Dragon
Director: Fruit Chan
Year: 2019
Rating: 4.0
Will
the real Fruit Chan please stand up. Who is this imposter taking on his name
as the director of this film? Admittedly, I have not been keeping up with
much of his work for these past many years but when I was, he was the Boy
Genius making some terrific realistic films about Hong Kong's working-class
disaffected youth. No one else was making films like Fruit Chan back in 1997
when Made in Hong Kong was released. Small, independent, using location shooting
in areas of Hong Kong that were forgotten with a handheld camera and actors
that were unknown or not actors at all. The Longest Summer, Little Cheung,
Durian Durian and Hollywood Hong Kong soon followed. He was labeled an auteur,
not something Hong Kong was known for. Perhaps Wong Kar-wai was the only
other one at the time - years past the New Wave back in the early 1980s.
Hong Kong film is a highly commercial industry and auteurs are generally
not welcome.
But these films did well enough and were
popular on the festival circuit. In 2004 he shifted to a more commercial
sensibility with the brilliant horror film Dumplings starring Miriam Yeung
and Tony Leung Ka-fai. And that was the last of his feature films that I
have seen with the exception of a decent segment in Tales from the Dark 1,
shot in 2013. So, I was not prepared for this bombastic dreadful pile of
idiocy. This is the same guy who directed the near-perfect Little Cheung?
Did having to satisfy the money from the Mainland corrupt him?
It begins with promise. A gritty action
policier that felt like it was going to be Milkyway influenced. Kowloon (John
Zhang Jin) is an undercover cop who is now suspected by the triad gang and
being tortured in a bucket of boiling water to confess. His tormentor is
played by the always welcome Lam Suet. Kowloon shows him the intricate dragon
tattoo on his chest to prove he is not an undercover cop. And tells him a
story that when he was a child he played with a giant dragon in the water
one day. Suet shows him a few small cartoon dragons that he has tattoos of
and Kowloon scoffs. Then police sirens are heard and the gang has to get
away but not before Kowloon escapes from the bucket and in a swirl of violence
kills them all except for Suet. Suet runs through the kitchen of a restaurant
into a ball room where a large dinner is being held. With Kowloon chasing
him and running across tables - finally he catches him - pins him down and
takes out his gun and shoots him multiple times with Suet's decapitated hand
landing on someone's table. This does not go over well in front of some of
the elite in Hong Kong and he is transferred to rural backwater where nothing
happens and where careers go to die.
And then a second body of a policewoman
is dragged out of the water. The other a few months previously. A serial
killer of policewomen. And Kowloon is given a month to solve it by his superiors.
This is about 30-minutes into the film and I am all in. I get prepared for
a tense hold on to your popcorn rip roaring action film. But Fruit Chan drives
the train right off the tracks into a chemical toxic dump at this point and
it just gets worse as it goes along till an ending that is so stupid it should
be in the Hall of Fame of misbegotten endings. Beyond belief stupid. You
may want to watch it just as a cinematic lesson in what not to do with a
film. Kowloon has a girlfriend (Stephy Tang) who just happens to be
a policewoman. Three guesses what happens to her. Tormented that he could
not solve the killings, Kowloon quits, grows a beard and becomes a cage fighter
allowing himself to be beat up.
A female psychiatrist (Annie Liu) tries
to help him in Macau where another killing of a policewoman has taken place.
Some nice location shooting there. Ok, maybe Fruit Chan will get the
film back on track now but no he decides that what the film doesn't have
is some horrific CGI action and piles it on like sweets at a birthday party.
This hasn't ended Chan's career thankfully - who knows, maybe it was a hit
in mental institutions but he has made two films since. Appearing also are
Richard Ng as the father of the psychiatrist, Loletta Lee as a policewoman,
Anderson Silva as a cage fighter, Marsha Yuen as Silva's girlfriend and a
very large cast.
