Popular reviews

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  Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★½ 7

  Liu Jinxi, what kind of man are you?
  -Detective Xu Bai-Jiu

  Yet another Hong Kong release that I waited to see until I could get my hands on an original cut of the film. Originally back in April I had bought Dragon on Blu-ray, but thankfully noticed before breaking the seal that the running time was almost 20 minutes shorter then it was supposed to be. I promptly returned it and waited till I could find a good price on a Hong Kong import instead.

  So to be fair I didn't watch Dragon, but instead watched Wu Xia (original title) at a running time of 115 minutes. This incessant need to edit Asian films for North American distribution has now…

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  Review by Tao A ★★★★ 9

  A martial arts remake of A History of Violence starring Donnie Yen and the OG himself Jimmy Wang Yu as the menacing villain whom you can't wait to see perish yet somehow sympathize with, what's not to love?

  If Jimmy Wang Yu could've directed this himself with his signature over-the-top freeze frame opening credits and a 70s soundtrack stolen from other countries, then it would've been perfect.

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  Review by Andy Fell ★★★

  DuBFaL-Asia-Weeks - 4th Round - Film-Nr.3 - Dragon

  Die Asia-Weeks setze ich mit diesem chinesischen Martial-Arts-Film von 2011 fort.

  Donnie Yen wurde mit der Hauptrolle besetzt. Als Regisseur war Peter Chan am Werk.

  Die Familie des Papiermachers Liu Jin-xi (Donnie Yen) wird von zwei Kriminellen überfallen und bedroht. Dem unscheinbaren Liu Jin-xi gelingt es, die beiden geübten Kämpfer auszuschalten, aber auf eine Art und Weise, die den Kommissar Xu Bai-jiu stutzig werden lässt.

  Bei seinen Untersuchungen findet er heraus, dass der Papiermacher ein gesuchter Schwerverbrecher ist und macht sich auf den Weg, den Gesuchten mit seiner Recherche zu konfrontieren. Das Ergebnis spricht sich auch in der Familie des für tot geglaubten Liu Jin-xi rum ... 🤔

  Die Kämpfe sind echt…

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  Review by Jay ★★★★★ 3

  Take the detective nature of a crime movie and merge with a wuxia action film and you have a great examination on the toll disciplining the body physically and spiritually can have. What seems like useless exposition about how someone’s body movements are used as a means to distract others, turns into what happens if investigating into someone seeking redemption can truly people. All of this comes down to how the body can be a destructive force that is constantly connected to the sins it creates for those the body in counters. This is Donnie Yen at his most emotionally vulnerable which is shown through his performance and physicality. Loved this one!! Do your best to seek out the true version of this movie! Really can’t stand the fact that there is a shorter version of this movie just for western consumption.

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  Review by YI JIAN ★★★½ 5

  Kung fu science, beautifully shot but they painted donnie yen as a horror figure and made takeshi kaneshiro look like filthy frank, is nothing sacred anymore?

  If you wanna check this out go watch the mandarin version (which I assume to be the original one), because the cantonese dub is pretty distracting.

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  Review by More_Badass ★★★★

  This long overdue and long anticipated rewatch didn’t blow me away as much as my original viewing. The pacing and intrigue does suffer when you know where it all leads, the plot takes quite a while to solidify, and neither the family ties nor the dark past are developed enough to give the final-act collision weight beyond the choreo and clash of icons.

  But Dragon aka Wu Xia aka Martial-World Sherlock Holmes aka A History of Kung-fu Violence is still one unique and hard-hitting slice of martial arts action. Outside of Five Deadly Venoms’ conceit of ‘small-town crime thriller with kung-fu supervillains’, you couldn’t ask for a better mix of detective noir and modern wire-fu spectacle. 

  (Although considering the direction this movie goes, it does pale in comparison to genre brethren like Tsui Hark’s The Blade)

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★ 4

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  Rated R - 1 Hour 37 Minutes
  Action - Crime - Drama - Foreign - Martial Arts - Thriller
  Director: Peter Chan
  Starring: Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Wei Tang, Yu Wang

  Summary: A Detective refuses to believe a simple peasant could take on 2 hardened criminals and comes to the conclusion he may be dealing with a wolf in sheep's clothing!
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  A fantastic film combining both martial arts and forensics investigation! Two polar opposite reconstructions of the crime scene tell two very interesting tales, now the Detective must sort out which one represents the truth. It is a win win situation for the viewer for both versions are highly entertaining! Either version of the story the robbers always…

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  Review by Peter Gutierrez ★★★ 1

  For its first half an hour or so, Wu Xia sent me into a state of the purest popcorn bliss of any film in a long, long time. Since it features Takeshi Kaneshiro, one of my favorite living stars, yes, Wu Xia had me primed from the get-go, and pairing him with Donnie Yen to form a kind of mind/body dynamic duo struck me as inspired on more than one level. Even better, Yen's character is not just a fighter here but seems to be living a double life of sorts, which forces him to be wily, and while Kaneshiro is a cerebral, Holmesian investigator, he's one that specializes in the physical. Which means that all the potential dualities are…

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  Review by Alend_Films ★★★

  Solid martial arts film starring Donnie Yen, who plays a seemingly ordinary worker with a troubled past set in 1917 China.

  The fight scenes are relatively rare but good and the narrative from the supporting actor's point of view is also interesting.

  A film that doesn't disappoint but isn't a milestone in this genre either.

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  Review by Freyr ★★★★★

  Its no secret that I love both Horror and Kung-Fu movies, though they aren't genres that cross each other terribly often. There is a certain level of weakness involved in Horror; requiring someone to be at the mercy of something more sinister than itself. Meanwhile, the martial arts are empowering and though there may be moments of loss, they tend to be more uplifting and adventurous takes on someone's ability to fight back. What I've found here in Dragon weaves those two elements together in a way I never particularly expected.

  On the surface, Dragon doesn't sound like a movie that would be any more "scary" than a typical Kung-Fu film. After successfully fighting off two criminals, a paper mill…

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  Review by reibureibu 2

  Dragon (Chinese: Wu Xia hilariously enough) is a martial arts film that feels both large and small in scope simultaneously. Small in that it is mostly confined to one village despite what you might expect as the plot develops, but also impressive in how well-realized that village is as various scenes of both drama and action unfold in different locations. I actually quite like this approach as it gives the environment a sense of verisimilitude and imparts a geography into us by the end.

  As a martial arts film it's also quite unusual, with a sort of Shakespearean-meets-Sherlock-Holmes balance that also tosses in some corny yet satisfying one-uppers; which is to say all the fighters within are formidable opponents, but…

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  Review by Lorenzo ★★★★

  aka Wu Xia (This is the proper translation of the original title instead of the generic Dragon that was bestowed by the Weinstein Group when they acquired the distribution rights in North America).

  This is more of a character study of Donnie Yen's papermaker character, Liu Jin-Xi, as to whether he's really the person that he says he is and the Detective Xu Bai-Jiu, played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, who's convinced that he's really an infamous wanted criminal.

  The director, Peter Chan, attempts to pay homage to the Wuxia films genre (One-Armed Swordsman reference) but at the same time, adding some new elements that hasn't been seen before. For example, the whole x-ray/CSI element adds a refreshing element. It's too bad…