Rating:

3

Year of release: 2005

Genre: martial arts

Director: Lee Kwian Kai

Action directors: Sammo Hung, Li Hui

Stars: Sammo Hung, Huang Xiao Ming, Sammy Hung, Richard Ng, Carl Ng, Lau Kar Yan

Rated IIA for mild violence

DVD Information

Company: Garry's Trading

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: English, Chinese

Extras: none

Notes: The DVD's got better quality than the movie itself, but that's not saying much.

Related links:

Sammo Hung biography
Movie Review index
Main Page

Legend of the Dragon

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Sammo Hung -- a near-legendary film-maker and one of the most talented on-screen martial artists from anywhere in the world over the last thirty years -- seems to have been caught in a funk since he traveled to the US to star in the short-lived TV show Martial Law. Unlike the ground-breaking work like Pedicab Driver which puncutated his output in the late 1980's - early 1990's, Hung's pictures over the past few years have been middling fare like The Avenging Fist. Sammo's fans have been willing to forgive these mis-steps -- perhaps in the hope that he has one or two great movies left in him -- but, honestly, I think even the world's biggest Sammo Hung fan would be hard-pressed to find anything of value in this stinker. It's not as bad as some of the other bombs that have dropped out of Hong Kong this year like Where is Mama's Boy, but it's dangerously close.

The plot is so banal that I'm not going to really go into much detail on it. Basically, Sammo left his wife and kid to travel to a remote village to learn Tai Chi. Some years later, his son (Huang Xiao Ming) finds him, so he can train to fight a karate champ (Richard Ng) to save his mom's business. Even though the plot is dead-simple, the movie takes forever to get anywhere, even going so far as to pad the thin running time with an extremely embarrassing dance number. There are a couple of decent fights near the end (including one where Sammo takes on "Beardy" Lau Kar Yan), but they're too short to make much of an impact. A screening of Legend of the Dragon steers the viewer between boredom and stupidty (Sammy Hung, as Huang's sidekick, provides some comic relief that does nothing but aggravate), bringing them to a destination that one hops Sammo never reaches again.