Chasing the Dragon

Chasing the Dragon is a Chinese crime drama film directed by Wong Jing and stars Donnie Yen and Andy Lau. When I first heard about the movie in production last year, a biopic based off the true story of infamous crippled Hong Kong gangster Ng Sek Ho, I thought it was a strange choice to have a world-renowned action star like Donnie Yen play him. Not that he is a bad actor or anything, but Yen is more famous for his karate chops than his acting chops. So who in their right minds would cast him as a handicapped character, essentially immobilizing and disallowing him to what he does best? Equally peculiar of a choice is Wong Jing as the director of the film. I felt his slapstick humor and sloppy storytelling would conflict with the overall serious tone intended for the movie. Coming out of the theater, I felt Donnie Yen is once again the best thing about a movie featuring him, but unfortunately Wong Jing's amateurish direction ruins everything just about everything else.

Donnie Yen plays Ho, an illegal mainland Chinese immigrant in Hong Kong. His character is very sympathetic, as he is family man looking after his people, earning 10 Hong Kong dollars a night as a street fighter. Here he gives the best performance I have ever seen and I really enjoyed his character, I felt he was able to channel between different emotions and display empathy, sympathy, loyalty and relentlessness. While he is probably not going to win an Oscar in February, he did go above and beyond his usual spectrum. The Chaozhou accent and language he used was very good and along with the excellent costumes and set design of 1960's Hong Kong, giving the film an overall authentic feel.

Where Chasing the Dragon really failed however was the storytelling, particularly as it relates to the editing and pacing. The movie starts out very simple and easy to follow, but soon expands unnecessarily to convoluting proportions with subplots of different crime bosses and corrupt officials I did not really care about. One of the worst piece of editing I have ever seen was a tragic sequence that bookends the first act. The scene was supposed to make you feel emotional and wrecked, but it just made me roll my eyes the entire time. I felt really annoyed because story-wise, the tragedy made very little sense for us to feel sad since we do not even know who the character is, but the technical execution of the scene was even worse. The film then transitions months ahead into the story and at that point, it had no idea what it wanted to focus on. Was it his love for his brothers? His friendship with Andy Lau? His mourning of his family? His desire to rise to the top? No, the film touches upon everything only slightly, but never truly exploring any of it in great details. Any of important plot points were montaged through quickly, with the director expecting the audience to know the true backstory to fill in the gaps. Instead of seeing Ho earning his power, we just see things getting handed to him. What exactly has he done except being a good fighter and a loyal friend to deserve all the accolades? Another big issue I have is the final 20 minutes, which pertains a subplot that blows up and becomes the main plot and the whole movie then turns into a revenge fantasy for no reason at all, because the writers said so.

My initial trepidation of Donnie Yen playing a crippled character, hindering his ability to perform his trademark moves was right on point. Donnie's acting was good, but because for half the movie he can barely walk, he is utterly wasted nonetheless. Simply put Chasing the Dragon is not an action movie, so if you go in expecting Ip Man quality fight scenes, you will be sorely disappointed. There are few hand to hand action scenes in the first half, but even those were poorly done by Donnie Yen standards. They were short, shaky and lack the oomph of a satisfying fight scene.

Overall, I feel the movie failed to tell a compelling story with its cast and production value. Wong Jing was definitely a very poor choice of director, and it shows throughout. His style simply does not mesh well for the story content. Who is the movie made for? Action fans? The action is not very good. Crime drama fans? The drama is muddled with technical problems. While not a terrible movie, the only good reason to watch it is two words: Donnie Yen.

Right, well with two of the heavy weights of Hong Kong cinema coming together in this movie, then what could go wrong?

I had not actually heard about "Chasing the Dragon" (aka "Chui lung") prior to stumbling upon it by sheer luck. I didn't even had to read the synopsis for it; I saw that it was a Hong Kong movie and it had both Andy Lau and Donnie Yen on the cover. This was an instant pick-up.

The movie turned out to be quite entertaining, and it is one of the better orchestrated gangster movies that I have seen in quite some time.

The storyline was good, fast-paced and nicely written. And the fact that the characters were so well detailed and unique also helped to make the movie experience that much better. Of course, having an amazing cast to portray these characters just helped the movie along all the more.

Donnie Yen was good in the role as an immigrant turned criminal in order to make a living in Hong Kong, and Andy Lau is, as always, doing a great job in a police role. Needless to say that both their performances were phenomenal. But the movie also boasted other quite interesting supporting actors. If you are familiar with Hong Kong movies, then you will definitely see some familiar faces - some of them even in small roles that weren't that important to the movie.

"Chasing the Dragon" was nicely paced and it didn't really have a dull moment throughout the course of its story. That worked quite nicely in favor of the movie.

If you enjoy Asian cinema, or Hong Kong cinema in particular, then you should take the time to sit down and watch "Chasing the Dragon"...

With a script this complex, spanning the rise and life of the main character from poor street fighter to druglord, it almost felt like they were going for a Scarface-level epic. but instead of developing realistic characters they used caricatures - the British villain felt particularly bogus - and unrealistic scenarios, such as large groups of people brawling in the streets with sticks and saucepans, who all happen to be amazing at martial arts. Perhaps having a main character who is too good at martial arts distracts from the biographical, historical tale. Tries to walk a balance between a heartfelt historical drama and an action movie. Didn't really work for me

Andy Lau in this film continued to play the role of Lee Rock, portraying his early rise in Hong Kong's police system under the colonial sovereign governing governing. Donnie Yen played a role as new comer and a new input of this Hong Kong generic and stereotyped underworld gangster who later associated himself and was manipulated by Lee Rock.

What I don't like too much of this film are the usual fatal flaws that almost every Chinese movie would always be unavoidable:

• Lousy screenplay with horrible dialog, making this film so painful to swallow.
• Bad acting that included Any Lau and Donnie Yen. The overly weight control

diet has deformed Lau into a skinny physical body with gaunt skeleton face, resulted him as a non-outstanding ordinary little guy without any special dominant aura to support his upper-echelon status in any job title, police or gangster organization. Any GREAT or POWERFUL role he played only gave me an impression that movie needed to make him being that role. There's not enough believability to convince me he could be that great or powerful person in that movie so far.

Donnie Yen is no exception in this movie with very bad acting with his bloated facial condition. He was also deeply affected by the bad screenplay to play a convincing enough character.

• Bad casting with many unnecessary clowns and jerks roles, such as Kent

Cheng, who played the sidekick and yes-man of Lee Rock. But in Chinese movie industries, returning favors or special relationship always needed to be considered from the cash-cow production groups behind the scene. So manuscripts would always have to be revised, added more unnecessary roles, thus unavoidably messed up the films. This trend and must-do is a tumor, an appendix that Chinese movie industries could never cut off clearly.

• Poor make-ups with funny wigs that included Donnie Yen's cosmetic extra

eye-lid liner surgeries and moving Botox on his face.

• Status-quo no brainer trademark directing. Jing Wong has produced and

directed so many similar genre film like this one. He never improved or evovled his directing technique and skill at all. Every film he directed or produced was almost the same, no new ground was ever broken.

This film, in my opinion, is just another shallow farce with lot of back alley fights typically in Hong Kong gangster films. Donnie Yen has been trying very hard to make him not just a martial-art fighting machine in his films but an actor with more depth, but with only such lousy screenplays lying around, with his aging process, the only choice he could do is making money first with his fighting skills whenever big payloads throwing his way like Jackie Chan.

Obviously, the movie "Chasing the Dragon" is not a remake of the 1991 movies "Lee Rock" and "To be Number One". Instead, it borrows their main protagonists and antagonists, and tells a completely different story. In some sense, "Chasing the Dragon" is a reboot of the gangster epics.

The production design, music score, action sequences and acting performances are most notably brilliant. The action sequences are unexpectedly brutal and bloody, and really stun me from time to time. Donnie Yen has long established himself as one of the best martial artists of all time, and here in "Chasing the Dragon" he gives an almost career-best emotional performance, even better than that in "Rogue One". The acting of Andy Lau, Kent Tong, Kent Cheng, and Ben Ng is fantastic as always.

On the other hand, the plot and the editing are not satisfying. Wong Jing is not a talented filmmaker. Some scenes simply lack consistency and credibility.

In a nutshell, the rating for this movie is 7/10.