French Director Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element) returns to American cinema this summer with "Kiss of the Dragon," a martial arts flick starring Jet Li and Bridget Fonda in utterly predicable roles. Besson wrote the script to "Dragon," (based on a story idea that Lee came up with) then opted not to direct the picture himself, giving it to former commercial and music video director Chris Nahon. In a stroke of definitive arrogance, Besson kept the script under wraps, not even allowing the principle actors to peruse his masterwork until a few days before shooting began. Had the script turned out to be something other than a wet rag, saturated with underdeveloped characters, melodramatic excess and cliches of the Van Damme variety, maybe Besson’s secrecy would have been justified.
Lee plays a martial arts expert and top Chinese government agent sent to Paris on a vague, dangerous and internationally important (translation: self-important) mission that goes awry when he’s framed by a trusted French police official named Richard (Tcheky Karyo). In a relatively unrelated display of evilness, Richard has forced Bridget Fonda’s character into prostitution and drug addiction by kidnapping and threatening to harm her daughter. When Lee and Fonda cross paths, he promises her that he’ll get her daughter back / stop Richard / save the day.
Nevermind that Lee spends an hour and a half on the run from Richard and his badge totting goons, then decides (cause now he’s angry) to walk into Richard’s precinct and take out everyone. There are more detrimental issues at hand, namely, this movie’s miserably failing attempt to encompass its fight scenes in a genuine story. Had the filmmakers quelled their pretensions and dished the action without the shameless, melodramatic character expositions, maybe they would’ve put something together that was relatively bearable.
But let’s talk pros. To the film’s credit, the fight scenes (that the melodrama does sparingly halt for) are solid. It’s clear that Lee knows how to mix it up in this arena…so what’s new? Editing. The scenes avoid "Romeo Must Die" choppiness and are cut tight, made clear, and set to a solid, deliberate rhythm. Some of Li’s moves are particular gruesome in ways that should prove satisfactory to Kung-Fu fans and piss of the faint-hearted types. Lee pulls new tricks, with a style of fighting he invented for the movie that incorporates Chinese acupuncture needles. Overall, there’s enough Bang to not leave you feeling entirely gypped.
In terms of actual acting, no one in the film is particularly engaging, genuine, or well directed. Fonda and Karyo go to waste in roles full of fodder designed to sound cool out of context – take for instance Richard’s line, featured in the extended trailer, "There is a time for diplomacy and a time for action. Diplomacy…is dead." When placed in the course of the film, the words seem uncomfortably larger than the minimal scope and complexity of the script, leading to the kind of incongruity that makes scenes humorously dissonant. In the end, this would be a thoroughly disposable movie if it didn’t have kick.
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