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

Rating:

4

Year of release: 1991

Genre: triad drama

Director: Kent Cheng

Action director: Blacky Ko

Producer: Eddy Chan

Writer: Nam Yin

Music: Lowell Lo

Stars: Andy Lau, Kenny Ho, Gigi Lai, Ho Ka-Kui, Jimmy Lung Fong, John Ching Tung, Melvin Wong, Wong Hoi Yan, Wai Gei Shun, Victor Hon Kwan, Shing Fui-On

Rated IIB for violence, drug use and language

DVD Information

Company: Mei Ah

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Extras: data bank

Notes: Your usual bare-bones Mei Ah release. Even though this is a "remastered" version, it still has the faded picture and badly-translated subtitles of the first version.

Related links:

Andy Lau biography
Movie Review index
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Dragon in Jail

In yet another in Andy Lau's very long line of Triad flicks, Dragon in Jail has Andy playing a convict named Henry, who is sent to jail after killing a local Triad as they were trying to make a "collection" at his father's shop. In prison, Henry meets up with Vincent (Kenny Ho), a rebellious young man. Both of them bond and gain degrees while they are incarcerated. When they get out, Vincent is able to travel abroad and become a lawyer, but Henry is forced to work a series of menial jobs. When the brothers of the Triad he killed start harassing his family, Henry decides to join the Triads. He becomes a success in the gang, but starts to lose the people that are most vital to him, most notably his pregnant wife, Winnie (Gigi Lai).

Dragon in Jail is a by-the-numbers Triad movie that brings absoultely nothing new to the table. Worse yet, it plods along -- the film does start to catch some steam near the end, but the first half of the picture moves at a snail's pace. It seems puzzling to me that Kent Cheng (himself a mainstay of Hong Kong cops-and-robbers movies) would choose to direct a story that is so similar to many of the films he (and Andy Lau, along with most of the other actors in the picture) previously appeared in. Dragon in Jail is a good example why the Hong Kong production boom of the 1980's eventually fizzled out -- film-makers can only go to the proverbial well so many times before audiences tune out.