Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I gave up caffeine this week.
Had to. I'm ferociously hooked on the stuff, and I've developed a horrible Mountain Dew habit. I use the stuff to wake up, to work at night, to keep myself going. It got so bad that Henchman Mongo became confused and started calling Mountain Dew "lifeblood" in public.
As a result, I've been feeling like I was in need of a strong, solid adrenaline jolt, something that would shake me from my haze and get me focused again. I had no idea what I was supposed to substitute.
Then I saw KISS OF THE DRAGON, and I got my jones fixed in a major, major way. My headaches are gone, my system is flooded with go-juice, and I am pleased to announce that we have finally been given a summer film that you don't have to call a "guilty pleasure" to justify enjoying, an action film that plays hard and plays for keeps, and a rollercoaster ride that doesn't insult you as it shakes you about. To tell you the truth, I think I'm in love.
I don't get invited to Fox movies. It's as simple as that. Never happens. I never see them early. So I wasn't even making plans for KISS OF THE DRAGON. I just figured I'd pay and catch a matinee show opening day. I've been curious ever since we heard Luc Besson and Jet Li were working together in some way. The trailer is fun, even if I don't think it's jaw-dropping, and the new TV spots had me even more interested. Then I got an e-mail towards the end of the week inviting me to the Fox lot. Not from Fox, but from someone else on the food chain on this particular picture, and I couldn't resist. Despite a wicked headache that made my left eye feel like it was going to rupture, I joined Robie and headed over in the middle of Saturday afternoon, settling in for the film without any real expectation.
And now, two days later, I find the film growing in my memory as I return to images and scenes, still managing to make me smile even now. KISS OF THE DRAGON is not a complicated film. It's not a deep film. In some ways, it's a silly film. But I don't care one little bit. KISS OF THE DRAGON has something that no summer film has so far this year: genuine over-the-top anything-to-please energy, and it's an action lover's wet dream, sleek and satisfying, totally European in sensibility, better acted and shot than it seems to have any right to be.
There are three stars in this film. Jet Li plays Liu Jiuan, a cop from Beijing who has been sent to Paris to help bust a drug smuggling ring, and I really like his quiet, diminuitive charisma here. I thought they misused him in ROMEO MUST DIE and LETHAL WEAPON 4, but this time out, he's credited with the story for the film, and Jet seems to know exactly how he should be used in a movie. He's a man of few words, and the first 10 minutes of the film are just propulsive motion as he arrives in Paris, finds his contact (played by Bert Kwouk, the one and only Kato from the PINK PANTHER films), then goes to meet the French authorities he has been sent to assist. He's put through a series of checkpoints before he finally comes face to face with Richard (Tchecky Karyo), a high-ranking police detective who is beating a man to death when they meet. Right away, Richard comes across as the French cousin to the crazed character played by Gary Oldman in THE PROFESSIONAL, and I was hooked. If you're going to play a barking-mad bad guy, then go for broke. Do it. Rip it up. Don't hold anything back. Karyo is typically more laid-back and restrained in his roles, so this is a lot of fun to watch. He's definitely the second star of the film, an important part of the equation. After all, a film like this is only as good as its bad guy.
And it's no spoiler to say that Richard is the bad guy, the French connection in the drug trafficking circuit. They set it up with the film's first major action sequence, in which Richard tries to kill his Beijing contact and frame Liu Jiuan, only to see things go quickly to hell when the Chinese agent proves to be incredibly resourceful. By incredibly resourceful, I of course mean he's able to fight huge armies of people single-handedly and scamper up and down the outside of hotels and the inside of laundry chutes like a monkey with suction cups. This first giant action scene sets the tone for the rest of the film, and it's a doozy. If you're not grinning from ear to ear by the end of the sequence, get up and leave, because you're in the wrong damn theater.
I'm betting on the grin, though.
The screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, their first collaboration since THE FIFTH ELEMENT, is a lot of fun, and Besson proves here that he has a distinct signature as an action producer, much like Bruckheimer or Silver, and that unlike those two, he is able to walk that fine line between trash and flash with an unfaltering balance. There are cliches a-plenty here, but they're handled with real flair.
For example, there's the Bridget Fonda character, Jessica. She's an American who got tangled up with Richard when she came to Paris, and he's taken her daughter, hooked Jessica on smack, and turned her out as a street whore. Most actresses would be lost in a role like this, just walking through it, but Fonda has a ruined beauty and a great inner light that makes her both heartbreaking at times and genuinely attractive. She and Jet become entangled as a result of that first hotel-room sequence, and she manages to make the role much more interesting than just an average romantic interest. I've been madly in movie love with Fonda since ARIA, and as she gets older, I find her endlessly interesting in the types of choices she makes. She's a film geek to an extreme (anyone who would want to star in a remake of Fulci's THE PSYCHIC is okay in my book), and she supposedly starred in POINT OF NO RETURN just because she was a fan of Besson's original NIKITA. Now she's managed to end up in an authentic Besson production, and she digs into the role, turning it into something memorable and even touching.
And make no mistake... this may be directed by Chris Nahon, but Luc Besson's fingerprints are all over it. In fact, his regular director of photography, Thierry Arbogast, is the film's third star. His work here is one of the reasons I got so giddy while watching. I've railed again and again about geography in action, and the way Arbogast and Nahon have captured the wicked fight choreography by Li and Corey Yuen is specific and smart in scene after scene. They set up beats, then pay them off. It's exciting, and it's not just the occasional move that works, either. Each sequence has its own pulse, and there's genuine wit to the way the action builds.
Really... there's no other way to put it. This film was a pleasure to watch. I made the decision early on to surrender myself to it completely because of the confidence it exhibited, even though I don't for a second believe it's set in the real world. That doesn't matter to me because of the internal logic of the picture. They set up the rules and they play by them, and it's never too easy for Jet to win. The fights in the film are bone-crunching, and he gets tossed around quite a bit. There's something really lovely about casting a huge cast opposite Jet. It makes him look three feet tall, and when he goes into serious ass-beating mode, it's even more fun to watch. He has to work for it. He earns it, and he earns our investment as an audience at the same time. I love the way he uses the acupuncture needles he wears in a band around his wrist, immobilizing people and easing pain in equal measure. I love the way the title is finally explained. I love Karyo's exit from the film. I love the way the sound is mixed here, so loud and concussive it'll make your clothes shake.
I don't want to give away a single action gag in the film, even though last night I found myself recounting an entire sequence to Harry Lime on the phone, laughing as I did so, breathless just in retelling it. I'll say this; don't go expecting the same tired wire-fu we've had jammed down our throats over and over in the past few years. This isn't like that. It's more about the contact, the skin-on-skin fights that even leave bruises on the people in the back row of the theater. This is a kinetic visual ride, and it's one worth taking several times. I'll be back in theaters on opening day, and I'll be taking people with me. I hope Jet Li is an active participant in all of his films now as a producer and creator, because so often, major Hong Kong talent gets screwed when they try and slip into the American studio system. Here's a case where someone did the impossible: they knocked it out of the ballpark without compromising their identity at all. It's glorious to behold, especially amidst this summer of unrelenting mediocrity.
"Moriarty" out.
