Hong chang fei long

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.

Oddly enough, given my nearly 40 years of Maggie Cheung fandom, then I never have seen this 1990 movie titled "Hong Chang Fei Long" (aka "The Dragon from Russia") before now in 2025. Sure, I knew that it existed, but I just never had the opportunity to sit down and watch it before now.

The storyline in the movie was adequate, but far from being outstanding. Writers Ella Bo-wah Chan, Ryoichi Ikegami and Kazuo Koike spent a bit too long time on the training sequences of Yiu Lung (played by Samuel Hui), which made the movie feel dragged out and monotonous at times. There are some similarities to the "Crying Freeman" movie or Manga to be sure, whether it was intentional or not, I have no idea.

The acting performances in the movie were good. There were a couple of familiar faces on the screen, aside from Maggie Cheung, with the likes of Samuel Hui and Loletta Lee.

There is a fair amount of action and fighting sequences throughout the course of the 94 minutes that the movie ran for, and they certainly helped to lift up the movie.

Watchable, sure, but hardly an extraordinary movie, so I hadn't been missing out on a grand cinematic gem here.

My rating of director Clarence Fok's 1990 movie "Hong Chang Fei Long" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Mark Dacascos was the actor who played the role of the masked assassin who sheds tears each time he kills a victim in the American version of this story, entitled CRYING FREEMAN and released in 1995. I mildly liked that film when I saw it; sure, it was no classic, it was a little cheesy, but it passed the time in a fairly entertaining fashion. Sad, then, that this earlier, Hong Kong-made outing, based on the same manga, turns out to be a bit of a dud and a lot worse than the Hollywood attempt.

The main problem I have with this movie is that which blights much of the Hong Kong action industry during the 1990s: the overuse of wirework. Why have two characters battling mano-a-mano when you can have them flying and flipping through the air and performing all manner of physically impossible stunts? Er, well realism is a good reason actually, but realism goes out of the window in DRAGON FROM Russia.

For an action-packed movie like this, it's a real shame that most of the fights are so over the top as to be laughable. Don't get me wrong, there are some occasionally solid moments, usually when things calm down a bit or are based on a smaller scale, like a kinetic bout at a train station that progresses into a moving train. In addition, the storyline is extremely muddled, taking about half the running time before things really get moving. These factors combine to make this a difficult watch.

Along the way, there's a lot of laboured comedy relief which sits at odds with the supposedly emotive central plot, a strange, rubber-faced bad guy (played by Yuen Tak, one of the seven Yuens along with Jackie, Yuen Biao, Sammo and Yuen Wah, who also has a non-masked supporting role), an extremely slow spot during the middle section where absolutely nothing happens, some lame romance, an entirely extraneous Maggie Cheung (as per usual) and a few nicely-staged assassinations. Sadly, the ending fizzles rather than goes out with a bang, and the whole thing is so convoluted that it's impossible to take seriously. In this instance, I'll take the American version over the Chinese, I think

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.

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