• Directed by Chris Nahon

• Written by Jet Li, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen

• Starring Jet Li as Liu Jian, Bridget Fonda as Jessica and Tchecky Karyo as Richard

    Jet plays a Chinese detective who goes to France to participate in a bust of heroin connection between the two countries.  The French Cop he is working with turns out to be the French connection.  The frog kills a lot of people and Jet goes on the run, where he meets up with a prostitute who is under the thumb of the same French cop.  They unite against their adversary.

    Jet Li is awesome, but most of his potential has yet to be tapped.  Too often his films rely on special effects and editing to enhance his moves, even though he doesn’t need it.  Haven’t these directors ever heard of Jackie Chan?  The biggest reason Jackie is so popular, is that he performs incredible feats on film, without the aid of special effects and without manic editing.  Watching Jackie is like watching the super-human boxer, Roy Jones Jr.—both can do things that you previously thought impossible.  Because so many of his stunts are fake, watching Jet Li is more like watching someone from the WWF--both pretend to do things that you know are impossible.  

    That brings me to the greatest virtue of Kiss of the Dragon, which is that it lets Jet cut loose a bit, without the editing or special effects.  It doesn’t do so nearly often enough, but you get a real taste of what could be, especially in the final fight, in which we are treated to blinding sequences of punches with whole punches, sometimes even whole combos being presented without all the cutting.  The majority of the time, however, the effects are in the way.

     The film itself gets of to a brisk, nicely edited start.  It has that slick Luc Besson style, and for a while, I thought I was in for a real treat.  See, I think Jet is not utilized properly in another way.  He exudes a kind of sophistication that would allow him to flourish in higher brow action films.  I think he’s closer to a kung-fu Connery than a Steven Segal, or Schwarzenegger.  So it’s unfortunate that this film degenerates into a fairly cookie-cutter action film.  It’s not unusually bad in that respect, but not all that good either.  On the commentary, Jet points out that the entire Paris police department are “bad guys” in the film.  Actually, they are an overt, ruthless, organized crime outfit.  He thought that might piss off French fans, but someone should have been concerned about plausibility.  The villain is so evil that he should be twisting a handlebar mustache and the film never misses an opportunity to demonstrate it. It even hints that he might be involved with child prostitution.  So this isn’t the most sophisticated film.

    It is a pretty good action flick.  Even without Jet’s dazzling kung-fu, the photography and acting are well above typical Arnold fare.  It also has a lot of cool little touches, like how Jet’s character uses acupuncture, both medicinally and to fuck people up.   

    This is Jet’s second big American film (I haven’t seen The One yet), and the second time he plays opposite a hot chick and the second time he never really touches her.  What’s going on here?  Is it a race thing? 

     Here’s something to be really excited about: Jet Li’s next film is being directed by Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, To Live).

        DVD

   The commentary is from Jet, Fonda and Nahon is pretty standard fair about how good everyone else in the film is, why I was attracted to this movie, etc.  I stopped paying attention after a while.  Probably the best features are the behind the scenes bits about the action.  One is on Jet Li and his fighting philosophy and it probably has the best scenes on the entire disc, as far as Jet strutting his stuff.  Another is about the choreographer and another shows how a particular scene was choreographed.  There is also one of those storyboard/film comparisons, which is pretty cool. 

• Film Overall 6
• Direction 5.5
• Acting 7
• Story 5
• DVD Goodies 7.5