DTG is a school for orphans where they are trained from a young age to do kung fu to protect themselves from criminal gangs and the like. Dragon Wong (Yen) and Tiger Wong (Nicholas Tse, New Police Story) are step brothers who knew each other as young kids. Dragon Wong was adopted by a Triad boss (Ma Qwun) after his mother was killed in a fire; he grew up to become his body guard, now a kick ass kung fu master and gangster. So the whole thing revolves around a plaque called the Luocha Plaque, which is a symbol of authority within the Luocha gate (A criminal gang), and its holder is considered second most powerful to the Luocha Gate leader Shibumi (he’s a crazy masked demonic type evil fucker with superpowers and kung fu skills). So this plaque goes missing and Yen is sent out to retrieve it, this reunites him with his step brother Tiger, and another dude called Turbo they meet after a huge showdown in a Japanese restaurant (who’s wicked with Nunchaku, but according to the master at DTG he needs practice).
Eventually Ma Qwun (Yens boss) plans to leave the Luocha gate which pisses off shibumi so he sends out his thugs (The double devils) to kill him. Dragon (Yen) finds out and shows up to defeat all of the double devils, which is awesome. Shibumi is impressed and goes to DTG to issue a challenge to Dragon. Well he isn’t there, only the master at DTG who ends up getting killed, and turbo and tiger get injured.
The big thing now is to defeat this Shibumi dude, and he has good kung fu, so Tiger and Turbo go to a guy called Master Qi (who we rarely even see) and teaches them crazy superhero kung fu styles so they can beat shibumi.
Donnie Yen is the action director, and he sure puts some crazy stuff up there on the screen, the fighting however isn’t particularly intricate, I’m not 100% sure of the style, but it’s very attack focused with huge powerful kicks, there’s allot of wire work, which is ok in some instances, but they all have superpowers and are able to do shit like kick people through walls, kick people with such high impact that they smash concrete (and remain alive) this is pure CGI laden kung fu action, it is all very fantastical. At one point Donnie yen has a CGI table top which he uses as a Frisbee, its fucking ridiculous but really cool. There is no doubt that the choreography is impressive and imagined on a large scale, but for me the whole fantasy supernatural powers thing detracted from the overall quality of the fights. But there is no doubt they are still awesome to watch, and are probably the strongest part of the movie.
The photography was very nice indeed. This is a very colourful movie, it kind of reminded me of CSI Miami, and you know how colourful that is. I read on Wikipedia that all of the CSI’s have different colored filters on their cameras to give them individual looks, Miami has the yellow filter, so maybe, possibly, I don’t know, but did they shoot this movie through a yellow filter, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Overall the scenes were vibrant and great to look at on blu ray, the color grading seems to be a very important aspect in the presentation of this movie from an artistic standpoint, it gave me the impression that the world they were living in kind of resembled the world that we know, but either in the future or along an alternative reality. Even the cityscapes were CGI, they looked very nice but not from outta this world.
Donnie Yen was 43 when he shot this movie. If he had a say in the character design stage then fair bloody play to the guy. Maybe it’s cool to look really ‘emo’ in china and get away with it, but not in the west. People who look like Emo’s, are Emo’s. Dragon, Tiger & Turbo all have the same hair cut, side partings with their hair covering one eye! They all look like 16 year old kids, I actually found myself smiling at this fact one or two times whilst watching the movie.
The main (non-action) director of this movie was Wilson Yip (IP Man, IP Man 2) I don’t know, and probably never will know his opinions on how this movie came out in the end, whether it was how he intended it to be or not but to follow this with a film I consider a master piece, one of if not the best piece of Chinese cinema I have seen, IP Man, was surely a major change in form. For a start IP man is a story based in history, its biographical, and the fighting style used in the movie (wing chun) is radically different.
If I watched this movie again, I would happily watch it with no subs. As I’ve already stated, I found myself getting bored through most of the movie, it’s a visual treat with some good nicely shot action, but this is far from Donnie Yens best.
I think I could give this movie credit for the strengths in its characters. The Chinese do things differently to western filmmakers (maybe not in all cases) but even tied in with a boring story and Ok-to-good- action, the relationship between the 3 main characters was strong enough to care about them even outside of the reasons the story was trying to give us to do so. We knew they were brothers, Donnie (Dragon) figures it out early on. You can’t help wanting them all to unite and fight together against the powers of evil. Dragon had to return from the dark side, but his intent was to do good for most of the movie, we knew he had a heart and he cared about the people around him, his mentor/father figure was a triad boss, he avenged his death because he loved him, he was grateful for what he had done for him as an orphan.
Sure enough, we see all 3 of these dudes (complete with new kung fu skills) kicking Shibumis ass at the end of the movie, they only just managed to beat him. It’s a pretty cool showdown but kept reminding me of the bathroom scene in Terminator 3, except I buy the concept that machines (terminators) made of metal can break through concrete, but these dudes are constantly destroying concrete walls, steps, ledges and that kind of shit. If these dudes were like superman, or the terminator, fair enough thats cool. But they stand right back up and get beat down and bloody from a kick in the face.
