I call it the French Connection, at least until I get sued. What it boils down to is that France acts as a melting pot, with its brazenness (google French movies and you'll see some brazenness) allowing standard martial arts action tropes to live up to their fullest potential. The movie doesn't even have to take place entirely in France. For proof of this, go watch Wasabi. Right now. It proves my theory so correct I don't even have to replicate it under controlled experiment conditions, so in your face Scientific Method! Huh? What's that? That's right, you've got nothing! NOTHING!
But I digress. Back to Kiss of the Dragon, after the jump.
This movie is fantastic. In it, Jet Li is inspector
The plot may sound a bit simplistic, and, sure, if this movie took place in any other country it would probably get very dramatic and try and fill out the plot with psychodrama or some kind of commentary on the nature of crime, but again, this movie takes place in France, so it doesn't need any of that. It has brazen outrageousness to make up for it.
For instance: Jet Li must face a corrupt policeman who frames him for murder. This policeman isn't just any guy, he's the top cop in all of France and ALSO its secret shadowy puppet master, who has supplanted the country's police force with his own goons, and is also like a heroin smuggler and a pimp or something. Pretty much if it's criminal, he's doing it. I'm sure he cheats on his taxes too. And he doesn't do anything halfway. Why stop at firing a pistol at a guy when you can try to set him on fire and blow him up with a grenade while he's stuck in a laundry chute (this happens,) or why just addict your favorite prostitute to heroin after she quit when you can also hold her daughter hostage in a
"We are totally cops. Totally."
But wait, there's more. The sheer over the top quality to the movie is more than enough to make it awesome. What really makes it a winner is that they know all about Chekhov's Gun. I'd go so far as to say that it gets used more than the actual guns in the movie.
Seriously. Anything that shows up, even for a minute, becomes significant rather quickly. Allow me to illustrate: Jet Li shows up at the hotel to meet with the french police. Along the way, he attracts some stares from people sitting in the hotel lobby and standing by pillars. He goes to the bar to meet with his contact, a guy pretending (I think) to be a drunken pilot, passing a pool table along the way. He meets with some rather goonly looking police officers (see above), who take him to meet their boss, Jerkface, who is in the middle of beating up a chinese guy for his cop friends, so that one of them can roundhouse jump kick the chinese guy to death, showing how they do things here in France. They take Jet Li's gun, saying how he won't need it, and then send him down to spy on a chinese businessman there for a meeting. The spying is interrupted when a greasy looking guy shows up with two prostitutes who ask the businessman if he wants to "go to Heaven." Then it's revealed that the businessman's room is bugged, and the police are next door, watching on their X-10 Spy Cameras.
About ten minutes later, the businessman has been stabbed repeatedly by one of the prostitutes in his hotel room, while the other pukes up in the bathroom. Jerkface shoots the stabtress and the businessman with Jet Li's gun, framing him for double murder. Jet Li dives out of the window and climbs next door and retrieves the tape recorded by the cameras. Then some fight scenes happen, which end up with the failed attempt at exploderating, and Jet Li running through the hotel lobby being shot at by the goonly police, including drunken pilot guy, who had been sitting at a chair using a newspaper to hide A PAIR OF GIANT UZIS. He empties his PAIR OF GIANT UZIS at Jet Li across the crowded lobby, shooting up the pillars only to be stopped when Jet Li uses his kung-fu skills on the pool table to kick a pool ball right between drunken pilot guy's eyes, rendering him instantly unconscious and showing us both that there is NOTHING in this movie that will not later be used in a fight scene, and the extent of Jerkface's control of France.
See, they didn't just shoot at him in an isolated room. They fired down into the streets of Paris, repeatedly. Then there was the bit when Jet Li tried to climb in a laundry chute and Jerkface tries to use a grenade. And need I mention the PAIR OF GIANT UZIS in the crowded lobby? Does Jerkface get fired for this? No? Well, he at least gets some kind of reprimand, right? Ooh maybe his boss tells him that he's a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, and then partners him up with the evil version of Danny Glover, who is still too old for this sht, butwaitno.
There're no official consequences whatsoever (outside of Jet Li now being wanted for a crime he did not commit, which is actually a pretty serious consequence, but it's not an official consequence, so there), and in fact, Jerkface meets with the Chinese Ambassador, telling him that Jet Li went all crazy and they have to help catch him now. There's an added bonus here when the Ambassador's aide tells Jerkface just how badass Jet Li is. The look on Jerkface's jerk face, is priceless, but still, that this man who has just unleashed a 2.2 Imperial butt tons of firepower in a ritzy hotel is allowed anywhere for anything, is amazing. Some might say this doesn't make sense, but I say it only serves to show you just how in control of the country Jerkface is. He can shoot everything and nobody can stop him.*
And that's just the first act of the movie. There's a great deal more during which Jet Li learns to love, shows off his acupuncture skills (they're important later) and beats up like fifty guys. Including a room full of black belts.
"The black belt, it does nothing."
And a fight scene in an orphanage.
I don't really want to give away any more if you haven't seen it, but let me just say that even the movie's title is used in a fight scene.
Now, why haven't you watched this movie yet?
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