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Millennium Dragon
Even after reviewing over 1000 films for this site, many of them of dubious quality, I can say without any sort of hyperbole that Millennium Dragon is absolutely one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The plot makes no sense, the acting (which is poorly over-dubbed) is terrible, and the action scenes are truly awful. What the hell was Yuen Biao thinking? Millennium Dragon's title proves to be fortuitous, as sitting through this dreck feels like you've just wasted a thousand years. I hate Phillip Ko for directing this green apple splatter toilet bowl residue of a film, and perhaps, I hate myself a bit more for actually watching the whole thing. Usually, I try to throw in some sort of plot description in my reviews, but there really isn't one here, or at least the "story" thrown upon the screen doesn't make a lick of sense. The English credits (which list Yuen Biao as "Yuen Bill") don't designate a screenwriter, nor does the entry on the Hong Kong Movie Database, which usually manages to get complete information on even the stinkiest low-budget releases. This leads me to believe that Phillip Ko dryly sharted out each scene as filming went on. The end results would certainly attest to the result of the lack of any real planning or thought. Okay, I will admit that there is a shred of a plot. Millennium Dragon seems to be about -- as the atrociously translated subtitles call it -- the Millenia Luminant Pearl, an artifact that is found in Manchuria, brought to Russia, and sold to North Koreans by a Chinese gangster played by Chin Siu-Ho, at which point the cops try to get it. Chin joins Yuen Biao and other actors who should really be in much better productions, like Leung Kar-Yan, by shaming their forefathers and embarrassing their children by even appearing in this dud. Seriously, what compels actors to work on shit productions like this? I have a hard time believing they made all that much money to justify actually having to admit they worked on this set. In fact, according to the Hong Kong Movie Database, Millennium Dragon made HK$12,440 during its' theatrical run. That's $1594.87 in US dollars, which is about $1500 too much, given how god-awful this excuse for a movie is. I know the crash in real estate in Hong Kong during the late 1990's hurt a lot of actors, but if things were really that serious, I would have sent Yuen Biao a cool $20 just to not have him sully his filmography with an entry such as Millennium Dragon, a film that demonstrates all of the things that were (and in some respects) still are wrong with the Hong Kong movie industry. RATING: 1 |