Dragon the Master (2001)

Dragon the Master (2001)
Aka: Enter the Dragon Master
Chinese Title: 戰龍
Translation: Battle Dragon

 

Starring: Roy Cheung Yiu-Yeung, Dragon Sek Tin-Lung, Edmond So Chi-Wai, Karen Cheung Bo-Man, Huang Yang, Billy Chow Bei-Lei, Xing Yu, Jewel Lee
Director: Ray Wu Wai-Shing
Action Director: Lam Moon-Wah, Lung Sang

 

Brucesploitation as a “legitimate” sub-genre of martial arts movies started within a year of the Little Dragon’s death with the sleazy (albeit somewhat accurate) Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story. It didn’t take long for these films to become big all over the world. Bruce Li (aka Ho Tsung-Tao) was the first legitimate Brucesploitation actor. Within two years, he was joined by Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin-Lung), and then Dragon Lee (aka Bruce Lei aka Keo Ryong) the year after that. Meanwhile, Leung Siu-Lung and Michael Chan Wai-Man were being marketed as Bruce Liang and Bruce Chen, respectively—the latter having that moniker in the overseas releases of his movies.

It is a matter of contention when the last Brucesploitation film came out. Bruce Li was already tiring of the gig by the turn of the decade. Dragon Lee stayed in the game up until around 1983 or so. One may argue that Bruce Liang was never a true Brucesploitation actor, with the exception of The Dragon Lives Again. And that was in 1977, while these movies still had some gas. Bruce Le seemed to stay in character the longest: his last credited Brucesploitation film is Bruce’s Secret Kung Fu from 1988, which I know little about save it cribbed footage from his first entry in the sub-genre: Bruce’s Deadly Fingers. That may very well be the last “official” Brucesploitation of that original cycle.

The 1990s were relatively light on that sort of thing. Stephen Chow often found ways to reference the Little Dragon in his movies, like the God of Gamblers sequels and The King of Comedy. Jet Li’s Black Mask is an overt reference to Kato, whom Bruce played in the 1960s. More importantly, Jet remade Lee’s classic Fist of Fury in 1994 as Fist of Legend. The following year, Donnie Yen adapted the same source material into a popular TV series of the same title. Hollywood also applied its decades of experience in making sleazy, inaccurate biopics to Bruce with Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story.

The Brucesploitation revival (if you may call it that) started in 2001 with Dragon the Master, starring a newcomer named Dragon Shek. It appears that the man studied both jeet kune do and Lee’s mannerisms, and has even gone on to teach the former at a kung fu school in Beijing. He made a handful of movies in the aughts, but has since dropped out of a sight as far as I can tell.

Dragon the Master tells the story of…well, I don’t know. The script has a difficult time focusing on a single character, so there are a number of different plot threads competing with each other for dominance. In fact, the least important character in all this is Master Tin Lone (Dragon Shek, of Iron Lion and Big Boss Untouchable), head of an important martial arts school in Hong Kong. He just hangs around his dojo and berates his students until it is time to dish out the kung fu justice in the third act.

More important is Master Tin’s sister, Shally (Huang Yang). She’s a developer for a video game company and is working on a new, realistic fighting game that I guess will make Mortal Kombat look like Gumbi. The movie opens with a cool fight between two mo-cap actors, one of whom is Master Tin’s student, Cherwood (Karen Cheung, of Big Boss Untouchable and The Bravest Escort Group). We then learn that the producers of the game are debating which style they should glorify in the game: Kung Fu? Muay Thai? Shally obviously favors kung fu, specifically jeet kune do. We also learn that her co-worker, Colewell (Ray Cheung, of The Mission and Avenging Fist), is kind of jealous of Shally.

Colewell is so jealous, in fact, that he teams up with a mysterious fellow named Mr. Tong (Takakazu Nishiwaka, of The Story of Freemen and Shadow Mask) to steal Shally’s program before she can finish developing it. To that end, Tong sends his female bodyguards (Shadow Mask’s Ritsuko Nagai and No Problem 2’s Seina Kasugai) to hack into her computer and steal it. Although the bad guys acquire the program, they can’t do anything about it without a disk and some of her passwords. So, they need Shally. And when Cherwood suspects her hustler boyfriend, Miles (Edmond So, of Dragon Heat and Kung Fu Police), of being involved, they end up at the nightclub where Mr. Tong and his entourage hang out. Shally is kidnapped and Cherwood must team up with her master to get her back.

Meanwhile, there’s a parallel subplot involving a hick kickboxer named Gordon (Billy Chow, of The Pedicab Driver and In the Line of Duty V) who has showed up in city looking for fame and fortune in the ring. More specifically, he wants to participate in some McGuffin tournament that Master Tin Lone is hosting. He initially goes to work at a rival kung fu school (whose teacher appears to be played by Lam Moon-Wah, the film’s action director), but leaves after they relegate him to menial labor. He also goes to Tin Lone’s school, but eventually gets kicked out for beating up all the students in a huff. So, he ends up throwing in his lot with Colewell and Mr. Long.

From the storytelling perspective, the major flaw of Dragon the Master is that it can’t decide who the main character is. It really jumps back and forth between Gordon’s attempt to find a kung fu school to sponsor him—you’d think there’d be more than two schools in Hong Kong and one of them would appreciate his talents—and Shally and Cherwood’s attempts to get the former’s computer program back from the bad guys. As I said before, Dragon Shek’s Master Tin Lone doesn’t really do anything within the bounds of the story until the final half hour or so. Interestingly enough, he is joined by Master Chan of the rival school for the final battles, even though the latter has no real reason to want to help him.

The fight choreography was brought to you by Lung Sang (who choreographed Shek’s other films) and third-string action director Lam Moon-Wah, whose career I covered in a separate article. Some reviews suggested that Lam was able to up his game to Yuen Woo-Ping levels in this film, although I didn’t really see it. At best, it resembles some of the early 1990s cheapies that Donnie Yen made to keep the lights on. Most of the action is grounded, with only the occasional use of wire-assisted trickery. This is especially true for Karen Cheung’s sword fights, which often go into Crouching Tiger territory despite the modern setting. Cheung’s fights often suffer from unnecessary undercranking, especially her fight with Naked Weapon’s Jewell Lee early on. The undercranking peeks its ugly head during Dragon Shek’s final duel with Billy Chow, which is really out of place. That’s a shame, because both men were displaying some solid bootwork and didn’t need the extreme speeding up at all.

That said, Dragon Shek, Billy Chow and Lam Moon-Wah look really good in their fight sequences. Some think that the showstopper is the duel between Shek and Lam, in which the latter performs drunken boxing. Also joining the action is a pre-Kung Fu Hustle Xing Yu, who plays a Thai boxer in Mr. Tong’s employ. He participates in a handful of fights and demonstrates the kicking prowess that would serve him well in future movies. The group melees are pretty decent and display some 80s style choreography, although I have to wonder why Dragon Shek randomly shows up in the infamous yellow track suit in one of them.

The fight choreography is pretty good for the most part, but cheapened by the aforementioned undercranking, quite a bit of shaky cam, and some bad lighting. I’m not quite sure about that last one, if it’s a problem with the transfer, the film stock, or if it indeed the fault of Mr. Kirk Wong (the Erotic Journey one, not the Crime Story one). However, much like Extreme Challenge, traditional martial arts films have grown scarce in Hong Kong over the course of the past few decades and Donnie Yen and Andy On can only do so much by themselves. I do think fans should watch Dragon the Master, despite its flaws.