This movie is available for purchase at www.edaymovie.com

Rating:

5

Year of release: 2005

Genre: kung fu

Director: Tony Mou

Stars: Gordon Liu, Dragon Shek, Joey Man, Billy Chow, Karen Cheung

Not rated; contains IIA-level violence

DVD Information

Company: Wing Artist

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, English

Subtitles: English, Chinese

Extras: none

Notes: A decent DVD considering the budget of the movie. No extras, but the actual movie is presented decently enough. This is a PAL-formatted disc, so it won't run in most US DVD players.

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Dragon in Fury

You might think the day and age of Bruceploitation movies has long been over, but 2005's Dragon in Fury proves the old adage that everything old is new again... sort of. Dragon in Fury is a remake of Fist of Fury (aka The Chinese Connection), so I'm sure most of you are familiar with the story. This time out, Dragon Shek plays Chen Zhen, Gordon Liu is the sifu who dies under mysterious circumstances, and Billy Chow plays the nasty Japanese villain (a role he also did in Jet Li's version of Fist of Fury, Fist of Legend). Dragon in Fury tries to change things around a bit by having subplots involving Chen's wife and one of his students (Joey Man and Karen Chung, respectively), but otherwise it doesn't stray too far from the original.

And that's Dragon in Fury's big problem. It does everything compentently, but it's nothing any viewer who has a passing knowledge of kung fu and/or Bruce Lee movies hasn't seen done many times before. Dragon in Fury does try to spice things up during the fight sequences, but the camera trickery and Matrix-esque techno music feel out of place. Still, the movie is sort of fun in a very brainless kind of way (especially if you watch it with the atrocious English-dubbed track), and it's always good seeing Gordon Liu on-screen (even if his role is little more than a glorified cameo). Though it's certainly not the greatest movie made by any stretch of the imagination, Dragon in Fury (at least compared to a lot of the stinkers Hong Kong has been cranking out lately) should provide a decen't night's entertainment if you don't go in expecting too much.