The first thing you should know is that Dragon Blade isn’t a good movie.
The second thing you should know is that it’s worth watching.
Right now cinema is growing into a globalized platform. Hollywood and foreign products will start to look indistinguishable, and that’s beyond the large interracial casting. As foreign ticket sales boom and domestics decline, movies will begin to reflect a foreign taste that, upon this generation, there will be a harsh clash of cinematic styles and tastes. It is through this that makes Dragon Blade worth a watch: although messy, incomprehensible, and poorly directed, it very may well be the future of movies.
The story of Dragon Blade makes its failure all the more disappointing, because it’s a great story. Written and directed by Daniel Lee (The Mask, 14 Blades), the film takes place centuries ago on the Silk Road. Fugitive Roman soldier Lucius (John Cusack) forms a bond with a Silk Road patrol leader Huo An (Jackie Chan), who is framed for smuggling on the legendary trading route. The two men gain each other’s respect as their men build a Babylonian paradise only for it to fall under siege by Tiberius (Adrian Brody).
Jackie Chan (left) and Choi Siwon (right) as “Huo An” and “Yin Po” respectively.
There’s more to it but it’s needless to write in detail, because in the end you only care about Chan crossing swords with Brody’s cartoonish baddie. There’s a band of Huns who come to their aid despite being a pain in the ass in the beginning, and a little blind boy who is crucial to the plot but just sounds so lame and boring to even just write in full. There is more but it’s all filler.
I don’t think anyone ever wished for John Cusack and Adrian Brody, wildly known for blockbuster action films, to have a fight with Jackie Chan and yet they surprisingly hold their own against Chan who actually disappoints in his effort. Still, the film falls short a good two or three more choreographed fights. I’m sure it was cut down because neither man probably had the patience for Jackie Chan’s notorious obsession with perfection (He’ll do hundreds and hundreds of takes to get things right), but the film horrendously suffers when you know half the reason to see this flick is just the curiosity of Jackie Chan fighting Adrian Brody and John Cusack. Upon seeing how well both guys actually can swing a sword, you want more and Dragon Blade denies you that pleasure.
Although famous in the west for his comedy, Dragon Blade is humor-less and that’s fine. Chan has pulled off action-lie, heavy drama, before (Crime Story, The Shinjuku Incident). He doesn’t need to make funny faces in every movie. Still, joking around would have helped because he’s upstaged by John fucking Cusack, who I have a hard time believing can run a treadmill let alone smash metal and in Dragon Blade he looks freaking great. Ditto for Adrian Brody, who otherwise is kind of wasted as he does nothing except sit or walk back and fourth talking like a lame Bond villain.
Adrian Brody as “Tiberius” in “Dragon Blade.”
Perhaps failing Chan isn’t so much Chan but Lee’s directing. Or maybe it is Chan, who is getting a bit long in the tooth and probably can’t move like he used to. He still moves better than I ever could, I’m 23 and have never broken a bone, but to anyone really familiar with Chan as an artist you know he’s an expert on tricking the camera to create illusions that can make flailing your arms look like legit strikes. The directing of Dragon Blade utterly wastes Chan, as its plagued with slo-mo and poor editing and framing that take away Chan’s camera magic.
I’m personally amused that the film takes such a Kumbaya angle in its story of the Silk Road. While I want to believe in and find the good in fellow man, a movie that’s so Chinese (a paragon of human rights) be so sentimental and progressive just feels heavy-handed and try-hard. The Silk Road, BTW, was an international trading route that stretched from Europe to Asia through the Middle East when Amazon was still just an amazon. While I’m sure some people got along, money drove the business. It’s all really cool stuff to learn about, but in Dragon Blade it’s nothing more than just set decoration. Really expensive set decoration, I imagine.
If Dragon Blade fails as a movie, it fails because of its filmmaking. At 100 minutes, the movie is rushed yet it takes its time doing the most inane things. Dragon Blade is wrapped up in exposition after exposition, horrible slow-motion, and corny, sentimental editing and some very questionable set pieces. Just in case you didn’t get how the boy is blinded, let John Cusack spell it out for you in more detail. Just in case you didn’t get the friendly rivalry between Chan’s men and Cusack’s outfit, here’s an overly long sparring match that ends in hugs.
John Cusack as “Lucius” in “Dragon Blade.”
This is what I’m talking about when I talk of Dragon Blade being some kind of future of cinema: Chinese cinema has very different sensibilities than western filmmaking. They prefer grandiose, sweeping emotion and blunt-force storytelling over subtlety and nuance. Yes, I know America has Michael Bay, but we also have David Fincher and even Steven Spielberg knows how to juggle spectacle with quiet, delicate pacing.
Dragon Blade is very Chinese in its storytelling, but with A-list Hollywood talent like Adrian Brody and John Cusack along with a literal army of Caucasian extras this could be what movies look like if foreign ticket sale trends continue as they do. And that’s not a bad thing, I just wish we had a better film to predict the future with.
We give Dragon Blade a 2 out of 5.