Hong chang fei long

Dragon from Russia is sort of a live action of Crying Freeman but very different than the french version!What struck me here was the action: there is a good amount of fights which were awesome, especially the climactic one!! They use wires in the fight scenes but they didn't distract me at all.(The Church scene is an instant classic!) As long as you don't expect action from Maggie Cheung, this movie will satisfy the average action lover!!........................................9/10

I saw this ages ago on television during the mid 90's. Recorded it even on VHS. No doubt the western adaption is more faithful in tone and in spirit than this one here. This movie on the other hand is too messy and the tone is all over the place. It's bothersome that the majority of the movie tries to be a comedy, and it certainly doesn't help that the comedy consists only of dirty jokes and innuendos.

What makes this such a messy affair is that the editing is atrocious. It feels like several reels or insert shots went missing during production. There are really important moments, that feel rushed as if parts were not filmed. For example Maggie Cheungs character sees her ex-boyfriend as the killer in front of a hotel for the first time. A close up of her face or reaction is totally absent, the movie does that a lot. It never takes time to ponder those important moments or let them breathe. On the bright side though is that the action choreography is well done. Don't get me wrong it suffers also from chaotic editing and the abrupt ending of things, but it is undoubtedly better than the western version which was more focused on aesthetics. Yes this film does have quite a lot of wire-fu, people forget it was done during the height of wire-fu era. But it's not the main issue here. I wish the movie had invested more time in the heartwarming moments like the new year's eve scene or the bonding of the family in the beginning, it would have cemented some of it's drama. As it is now, it is very light-hearted with a main focus on constant action. Enjoyable for HK action fans, but regular viewers or fans of the manga might get bored because of a missing story to engage with.

It is forgivable for Maggie Cheung for acting in such a crappy action drama, with her excellence performance in the later stage of her acting career life, where Centrestage, Irma Vep, In the Mood for Love and Clean makes up for the crap she acted in her early days.

The plot sounds like any other action thriller, with Yao (veteran HK actor Sam Hui, unfortunately, takes the leading role of Yao), an orphan who grows up with Yip (Cheung) in USSR (before it was named Russia) and falls in love together. However, Yao was captured by a mysterious man who leads a Japanese underground assassination squad named Eight Hundred Dragon. Yao was trained by a weirdo on skills of assassination and eventually, Yao became one of the top assassin. He was stuck in the war between Eight Hundred Dragon and their rival squad, and he must get himself out of the war.

The plot is acceptable, and the first 20 min of the film is good. But after Yao was captured by the mysterious man, the whole film began to fail. It continues like crap and ends like crap. The editing was poorly done, leaving the audience with tonnes of question mark what has happened. Explosion scenes were poorly done, dialogs were laughable and tonnes of bullets were wasted just for the sake of using it.

Crying Freeman is also the film where you see female stars such as Nina Li Chi and Lolita Lee, who are well known in HK for their big boobs in X-rated films, in their pre X-rated film days. Their role given were above average, but the direction leaves them unable to expand their roles further.

In all, this is one of the worst production made in the 90's i've ever seen.

I am flabbergasted by just how bad this movie is. It makes Christophe Gans' 1994 remake look like a friggin masterpiece. This movie has all the things wrong with kung fu films made by Hong Kong in the early '90s -- it's stupid, contrived, and completely mindboggling in its badness. Avoid at all cost.

'Dragon From Russia' Tells the Story of Yo an artist who is kidnapped while fleeing Russia with his Girlfriend and her family, He soon finds himself chained to a mysterious Martial Arts master and begins to teach him the ways of being an assassin.

This action classic directed by the brilliant Clarence Fok is taken from the Manga comic book 'Crying Freeman' and is one of the best comic adaptations out there with scenes lifted directly from the pages of the comic itself.

The cast is well put together Sam Hui handles himself well in the leas role of the Free Man while Maggie Cheung puts gives a touching performance as the woman he loves. Another interesting performance comes from Jet Li's wife Nina Li Chi who plays an assassin fighting along side Yo, which makes a refreshing change from her role in 'Tiger On The Beat' in which she receives a rather brutal ass kicking from Chow Yun Fat, but thats a different movie all together.

But one thing which made this movie spectacular was Yuen Clan member Yuen Tak, who co-stars in the movie as both Yo's master with the rubber face and Yo's assistant.

Each fight is expertly choreographed and exciting to watch, showing that each Yuen clan member has their own unique and energetic style.

All in all a fun action film to watch especially if fans of the Crying Freeman comic would like to find something different to that of the western version starring Mark Decascos, which has to be said is a good flick as well.