Kiss of the Dragon - 2001

Kiss of the Dragon (2001)

Forget Romeo Must Die. Please forget Lethal Weapon 4. Kiss of the Dragon is the crossover film Jet Li fans have been waiting for. Combining a cool, Ronin-like European setting with the Asian action star's top-notch kung fu, it's a first-rate adventure on par with many of his Hong Kong films. Thankfully, it also doesn't feature the mid-air wire-fu fighting that's quickly starting to become overused. Here, Li street-brawls with a brutality not seen since Fist of Legend, his remake of/tribute to Bruce Lee's Fists of Fury.
Kiss of the Dragon is much like another Bruce Lee movie, Return of the Dragon. Both films follow a Chinese martial arts expert to Europe where he hunts down a group of ruthless criminals. But whereas Bruce did it for revenge, Jet's doing it for justice. He plays Liu Jian, a crack Beijing cop seconded to the Parisian police to help bust a Chinese heroin dealer. However, the detective supervising the operation, Jean-Pierre Richard (Tcheky Karyo), turns out to also be said smack-peddler's French distributor — a murderous Bad Lieutenant who kills the Eastern drug dealer with Liu's gun, framing the Chinese lawman and forcing him to go on the run.

Revealing these details might be considered spoilerism. However, they all are shown in the film's first major scene, an action-packed 15-minute showstopper culminating in a laundry-room brawl where Jet takes on all comers with laundry baskets, mops, and steaming-hot irons.

Many filmmakers would merely jump to the gunplay, but freshman helmer Chris Nahon shows the same flair for stylish action that marked the early work of Kiss of the Dragon's producer/screenwriter Luc Besson, the fallen dauphin of French cinema. He builds tension by keeping the opening exposition to a minimum: Liu enters a swanky hotel, only to be rerouted to various rooms by secret notes and lurking bodyguards. Complications ensue with the appearance of a dazed prostitute named Jessica (Bridget Fonda), but Nahon lets the suspense mount, letting several nail-biting minutes pass before the guns start blazing.

While an action director with a sense of restraint is rare these days, Besson's script (based on a story by Li) has well-worn tropes aplenty. Blandly played by Fonda, Jessica is a hooker with a heart of platinum, turning tricks only because Richard is holding her young daughter hostage. As if that wasn't coincidence enough, Jessica also just happens to street-walk the same sordid alley that Liu's safe house is on. (You'd think the moneymen at Fox might've sprung for a second location, the cheapskates.) Richard is also straight out of the bad-guy playbook. You never believe for a millisecond that he could be anything but pure evil — the first glimpse viewers catch of him, he's beating a suspect to death with his bare hands.

Karyo, however, deserves credit for making his ridiculous character more palatable than written; most other actors would have pulled a Gary Busey and simply started cackling, hollering, and baring their teeth. However, like Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege, Karyo gives his dirty cop a bit of shading and delivers some hilarious bon mots; when Jessica's daughter asks the part-time pimp if he has any Barbie dolls, he cheerfully replies "All my Barbies are working."

The real surprise performance, though, is Li. Given only a half-dozen lines in Romeo Must Die, he has more dialogue in Dragon than Jean-Claude Van Damme did in his last three films combined. Despite being saddled with a thick accent — which is appropriate, considering his character is from Beijing — Li carries himself with determination and grace. When Jessica's pimp starts roughing her up in front of Liu, the agent's outrage is convincing, as is his all-but-inevitable fury.

But no one's going to plunk down $8 to see Li emote — they're there to see him kick ass, which he does — en masse. Editor Marco Cavé's quick cutting may irk those used to watching Li deliver fisticuffs for minutes on end, but martial arts choreographer Corey Yuen smoothes over the rough patches. Using tricks honed directing such Li classics as New Legend of Shaolin and Fong Sai Yuk, he showcases Jet's ability to simultaneously pummel dozens of opponents. Nowhere does this skill shine more than during the finale, where Li batters an entire Paris police station into paté. After watching this dizzying orgy of hand-to-hand combat, there's no denying this Dragon has got some serious fire.