Dragons Forever
Review
Stars: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Jackie Chan, Yuen Wah, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, Billy Chow Bei Li, Dick Wei
There are many many movies with the lucky stars, namely "My Lucky Stars" and "Winners and Sinners" to name a few. All have slapstick humor, and all have their share of great fights (except "Winners and Sinners", which excels more in comedy). "Dragons Forever", however, is the best one to come out of the series in the way of action so far, I believe. The others either don't have enough action or what action there is isn't as good as this. There are flaws with "Dragons Forever", namely some of the music (Sesame Street) and the corniness of the romance, which isn't so bad when you look at it from a slapstick perspective. In fact, I kinda liked it.
The story involves Jackie Chan, who plays Jackie Chan the lawyer, and is the defense for Yuen Wah, a narcotics manufacturer. Sammo Hung plays a sort of henchman for Jackie and intends to get his hands on a fish pond which is being polluted by Wah's manufacturing plant, and that would allow Jackie to settle the case more easily, or something like that. Anyways, Jackie falls in love with a woman, who happens to be on the side of the prosecution, and Sammo falls in love with the woman who owns the pond, and who also finds out the reason Sammo tried to date her in the first place. It's all really quite funny and provides lots of times for the 3 brothers to show off some good humor, and of course lets us see Sammo play his clumbsy role (very effective actor) as a helpless romantic. Jackie also goes to Yuen Biao, who goes by Tung Tak Biao, to try and get him to bug the woman's house (the one who owns the pond), but also has Sammo doing the same thing. However, the two don't know eachother, and Sammo finds Biao breaking into the house and therefore sedates him, all in good humor too.
I think that this movie was the reason I started liking Yuen Biao so much. He is a small guy, like myself, and plays a serious role and demands that his questions be answered, like me too. So I think I can relate. In addition, we get to see some of Biao's political side when he begins to explain how the fishes in his apartment resemble followers of communism, and how the birds, which he seems to hate, are the disciples of capitalism. The fishes just happen to be swimming through a narrow tube that Biao has set up which flows through the entire apartment. It seems as though Biao is showing discontent with capitalism, which is a little odd considering he is one of the greatest advocates for bringing the Chinese out of Tibet. Perhaps he would enjoy communism without the violence, I'm not sure. Input would be great.
Jackie and Sammo, on the other hand, don't show much in the way of politics, besides the fact that Jackie is a lawyer. I would like to see, some time, a movie that has some politics involved featuring the brothers, but I doubt that will happen. Another movie you can see that features Biao in a political role is "Righting Wrongs". It's an extremely entertaining movie and has Cynthia Rothrock (I think she's in too many hk movies) and also Corey Yuen Kwai, who directs the action as well.
The action scenes in "Dragons Forever" are amazing. Jackie gets right into it within the first 5 minutes of the movie when some baddies walk up and harass his girlfriend (he almost plays a playboy). He does an awesome drop onto a car hood from about 9 or 10 feet up, or so it looked, and it was done perfectly. Other great parts include when the 3 brothers are all fighting eachother because they can't seem to get along very well. Sammo and Biao fight in a room, while Jackie tries to keep them quiet (he has a guest, and if she found out about those 2, things would get sour). It's hilarious. Biao and Sammo are the funniest guys to fight eachother. Sammo slaps Biao in the face, points and laughs and Biao takes advantage of it by kicking him in the gut. Then, after the guest leaves, Jackie goes in to settle things, and all 3 have a small fight inside his house, and at one point each one falls to the ground with a busted nose. In fact, the tension among the brothers is so well done that I was thoroughly convinced that Biao and Sammo hated eachother during the production of the movie, which isn't true. Great job. And there is yet another scene where the three of them are outside Sammo's house taking eachother out. Lots of kickboxing, which is really what the movie consists of in general. After that scene they are in a bar, where there's a brawl with lots of people and we get to see Dick Wei get smashed into a table.
And then on a cruise line, Jackie does some great acrobatics. There's one point where he's climbing stairs, jumps over to the left side about 6 or 7 feet up and grabs the railing, kicks a few men, then jumps across to another railing, and does some more fighting, all in one cut. Pretty amazing what he can do. He fights with Dick Wei for about 10 seconds, which is too bad, but then kicks him out the window, down into the water about 25 feet below, so that basically makes up for it. But still, Wei is one hell of a fighter, and should have received more time.
Sammo gets to prove his abilities near the end when he takes on around 18 different guys in the plant. It's all done in almost a Bruce Lee fashion, except the opponents actually get up afterwords. Urquidez comes into the scene at that point, bouts a little with Sammo, and then knocks him out. What bothered me about this production also was what they did to poor Benny. He has this weird makeup and they had his hair grow out into a mullet that they tied back. It looks like crap. In Wheels on Meals he was the most intimidating villian I've ever seen in ANY movie before, but in this one he looks like scum. Oh well, I think he actually moved better in this one than in WoM. It's like the guy is on speed or something. I heard about the filming of Wheels on Meals. Jackie, I guess, was talking about how Benny hit so hard in one of the fights that they almost fired him. Maybe that was the scene where Biao and Chan meet Keith Vitali and Benny, but that should give you an idea of what this man can do.
At that point Biao and Jackie come looking for Sammo, and get in a fight with mutiple enemies. Biao goes up against Billy Chow, and when I see Billy Chow come on screen I always get excited because of the size of the guy. He's probably only 6'2, but compared to the others, he's a giant, because the brothers are generally short. He and Biao do some chasing and kickboxing, and at one time Biao jumps through a hole about 2 feet wide in a broken glass window, with jagged edges, and does it with a diveroll too. Hard to believe, so just accept it. Oh, then he jumps through another window, kicking 2 baddies in the process. He and Chow fight some more, which is good looking because Biao gets to do some acrobatics on the way down to the floor, and he does a kick up to Chow's chin which knocks him up into the air and his neck lands on a cement slab. I'm pretty sure it was a double because the hair style was different. Biao tries to stand up to Urquidez next, which is really funny, because he gets a kick to the chest from the westerner that knocks him out. He gets up just fine, but realizes that it's not worth the battle and just lays down again.
At this point Jackie and Benny get to perform. It's a real show, and probably the best looking fight in the movie. What angered me though was that Yuen Wah didn't get much of a fight. He throws 10 or so punches at Sammo, Wah style, but then is dead. He does get to do some acrobatics on a staircase, though.
There is a point during the Jackie vs Benny fight that's pretty contravercial. There is a great looking kick done by a double, who many believe to be left handed because it's a left handed kick that Jackie couldn't do, hence the double. Nonetheless, it's a cool looking kick that involves him laying his entire leg over Benny's chest, and then falling into it as well. The fight ends with Urquidez doing a spectacular stunt by flying into a glass cabinet (with lots of explosives too of course) and I can't see how there would have been a double.
What did I learn from this movie? Urquidez is the best looking westerner to be in an HK film. Rothrock and Norton may be good in real life, but they look like crap on the big screen. That's what really matters in these movies. You have to move quickly and look good in the process. I also learned from Yuen Biao that when someone asks you 2 questions, you should answer both instead of just answering the second one.
Rating: 9/10 (Due to the corny moments that were pretty unnecessary)
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