As Leis do Crime

The movie is based on true events, so the filmmakers had to walk on the thin line between integrity and artistic freedom, which may have effected the story being told, and made everything overall weak.

Andrew Lau, known best for Infernal Affairs, the movie that inspired Martian Scorsese's the Departed, with the help of Andrew Loo, takes his from of crime drama off the streets of Hong Kong, and place it on the streets of Queens, New York, which I thought was perfect.

It's starts out about a boy who gets caught up in the crime underworld in the 1980s and leads to unwinding The FBI's theory that the large amount of Immigration in the city is bringing crime into it.

The movie was just a jumble of events slab together by a story that did not feel really drawn out. I loved the fact that the movie is filled with Asian Actors not doing the stereotypical action Kung Fu genre but wish they had more to work with.

I went into it expecting to see a a great Asian Cinema Crime Drama set in New York which sounds amazing, and even though I liked the movie it was not anywhere as good what I would expect a collaboration between Scorsese and Lau.

This is based on true events that happened in America. You may look at it, as either glorifying violence to a degree or making immigrants look bad, but that would be beside the point. I don't believe this to be a propaganda either way. I do believe that the story is interesting and while it probably is heighten for movie purposes it deserved to be told in a way like this.

Acting is OK, the setting is decent and the action scenes deliver mostly (though they are not too heightened/fancy). There still is blood, not many women involved (other than to look pretty) and everything else you'd expect (for better or worse) from a B-movie, even without it being based on true life.

The plot is good and the direction is also alright. But the weakest link of the movie are the actors of the main characters.

Justin is just too skinny and little to make a credible gangster. If he threatened me I think I woukd laugh. In reality is just difficult to picture it.

The film could be more darker, with more character development. For example, Steven is the crazy one, but sometimes he just doesn't seem that crazy, just plain retarded.

Sonny and Steven could have talked more to give the viewer the sense of bonding, instead the movie is just plain simple. The movie evolves way too fast and the all triad gets arrested too soon. It made them (gangsters) look careless.

It kind reminds you the senseless gang banger movies of Hong Kong

*What's the Hong Kong equivalent of Hollywood, eg "Bollywood" for India?

I read the story of the Green Dragons over 20 years ago, and have just recently heard of the movie adaptation. After watching this, I think this is another case of "the facts are more interesting than fiction". The original events were violent and raw. It ended with a sense of retribution. What the director did with the movie version was to partially "Hong Kong"ize the story. This really doesn't work unless you go all in and purposely try to suspend the audience's disbelief.

I don't mean to say Hong Kong action movies are bad, but they only fit in a style that shouldn't be done for non-fiction, even with a gangster movie. All the brooding, the slow moving gun mechanics, the improvised romance, etc. works great when the action is so gratuitous, you can shut your brain off and enjoy the flick for what it is. In Dragon, all the personalities, including the lead, just mesh into a stylized melodramatic comic character of their real counterparts. It's not the actor's fault, since their portrayals are closely reminiscent of Hong Kong action movies.

Again, I just think they should have gotten a more appropriate director and stay truer to the original events. For example, in Casino, I can believe it happened in real life as shown on the screen... not so much with Dragon.

That said, I enjoyed the movie, perhaps mostly because I enjoyed the story.

A collaboration between Wai-Keung Lau (Infernal Affairs trilogy) and Martin Scorsese (The Departed) about Chinese gangs in New York at the end of the 1980s. One would expect fireworks, right? Not so much. This movie is entertaining but misses a bigger impact. It's not surprising the film didn't get a wider release in the US... The rather conventional story is embellished with different kind of colorful gangs from the (Asian) underworld, some pretty gruesome torture scenes and an attempt to make a huge plot twist at the end, but finally fails due to ordinariness. It needed more "cool" and a more interesting angle storywise. Fans of Asian-centered mob movies should give it a try though.