Dragon

Let me clear up one thing from the get go. Even though the English title of this movie is Dragon, in Chinese language it was titled as "Wu Xia" which has a totally different meaning. In any case, I honestly think this is one of the better movies of Donnie but definitely not the best ones. Sure, some might think of this as a typical Chinese martial arts film as well and that is absolutely fine.

I am not all too familiar with Peter Chan and his works. However, after watching this move, I am fairly intrigued and will check out his other films because l liked this movie and it aligns with my interest. I am a huge fan on martial arts based films but I don't want them to fight all the time. There must be certain amount of story that attracts my interest and Dragon is definitely one such movie for me.

Plot: Liu Jinxi is a quite family man who works at the the village paper mill suddenly finds himself fighting for his life when crooks demands money from the owner of the mill. He's a great martial artist yet he doesn't fight back as he was suppose to. He doesn't want the village people to know how great martial artist he is. He closes the window of the mill and then takes care of the crooks resulting theme being dead. When everything is over, the village finds ordinary paper-maker somehow managed to save himself while protecting the owner. Although he is hurt, he is humble and does not brag about his fighting skills. The lead character Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) is our hero, gets appreciated by villagers who does not know that he has a past. In reality he is Tang Long who happens to be the son of a warrior group known as "72 Demons".

After the killing of the crooks, Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) shows up in the village. He is a detective and finds it hard to believe that an ordinary village paper-maker could handle and kill two crooks without sustaining any major physical injury. He is suspicious about Xu and starts talking to village people including Xu's wife, Yu (Tang Wei) to know more about him. The detective eventually finds out that Liu is not native to this village and he only showed up few years back and married Yu who was married before and has a child from the past marriage. From the forensic analysis Xu comes to a conclusion that those crooks were not killed by any weapon rather it was a martial art tactics that caused the death. The suspicion grows and the detective eventually figures out who actually Liu is.

Xu is an idealistic detective who believes people should be held responsible for their actions regardless of their intentions. Liu realizes that Xu is becoming suspicious about his identity and gives no reason to believe that indeed he is Tang Long. Xu sends investigators to Liu's village to find more about him. It becomes quite clear to Xu that Liu lied about his past and Liu is actually the well known criminal Tang Long. Liu urges to Xu to leave the village and leave his family alone. By now, Liu's father (Jimmy Wang) got to know his son's whereabouts and send his group to bring back his son Tang Long.

Xu tries to protect Liu but fails and eventually 72 Demons group captures them. Liu severs his left arm in an attempt to leave the group. However the group still takes him to their master aka the father of Tang Long to decide. The master agrees to let Tang Long / Liu leave in exchange of his grandson which Liu can not accept. The fight begins between son and father and the master eventually dies by a blot of lightning. Xu announces the case to be close and Liu returns to their village with his family.

Verdict: The story of this movie goes really deep and tend to bring lots of references from the past which at times may seem a bit confusing, specially at the early stage of this move. Not so surprisingly, as the time progresses the story continues to unfold various branches and starts to draw the main picture. It has number of scenes and plot twists which may surprise viewers specially to those who are watching it for the first time. At times you will feel a bit emotional and disturbed by some of the horrific scenes but nothing an adult should not be able to handle.

I definitely did not narrate the entire story but there are few intriguing things that you need watch in order to understand the story, timeline and the chronology better. There are quite a few slow-motion scene on this movie which I think was truly great and one must watch it on big screen to see and feel the details.

I watched this movie way back although I can't remember the exact time-frame. So, I decided to watch it all over again just to write few words. Re-watching any film is not something I do on regular basis, unless I really forgot the story line altogether which is exactly what happened to me in this case. Even then I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.