Dragon from Russia

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

This is a very BAD adaptation of the manga "Crying Freeman", the basic story line behind the film is absolutely CRAP! The fight scenes are poorly choreographed.

Overall a extremely dumb movie.

If you want to watch a good movie check out the actual live action version of the Manga "Crying Freeman", starring Mark Domasco

Dragon From Russia is an excellent movie to watch. The Story of Crying Freeman is on par with the manga it's self. I mean did you guys watch the same movie as I did? Mark Dacascos did a good job, but the likeness was really not there. Dean Shek did a good job in putting this film together. The action was good, the comedy was a little bit over the top, but then again so was the comedy in the anime.

The only thing that was missing in this movie was Bai Ya Shan, the overly huge child minded woman, but then again who in the hell could play that part.

For action and good story check this movie out. The average reviewers on here are just waiting to hate something anyway. See it for yourself and you'll know if you like it or not.

Me................. I give it 8.9 out of 10, that is only because like I said, the comedy was alittle over the top. Other than that GREAT MOVIE.

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.

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.