Dragon Fight
CAST

Jet Li
Stephen Chow Sing Chi
Dick Wei
Nina Li-Chi

ACTION
Dick Wei
WRITER

James Yuen
Sally Nichols

PRODUCER
Henry Fong
DIRECTOR

Billy Tang

RATING
   Dragon Fight
Dragon Fight
AKA : The Defector || Dragon Kickboxer
Year : 1989     Reviewer : Andrew Saroch

Jet Li and Dick Wei play two Mainland Chinese Wu Shu performers who are touring New York with their troupe. Wei makes no secret of his desire to leave his Chinese homeland and seek the supposed prosperity of the Western world. Taking one such opportunity to do so, Wei absconds from his friends and disappears into the busy city setting. Li searches for his fellow athlete and, on finding him, desperately tries to convince him to return to the troupe. Unfortunately not only does Wei flatly refuse and again runs away, but Li misses his own flight and is therefore stranded in the U.S. Li decides to stay in the vain hope of persuading Wei that he is making a major mistake by staying in a city where he is a stranger. To this end Li begins working at a local Chinese restaurant and befriends a delivery boy (Chow Sing-Chi) who organises shelter for him. Meanwhile Wei joins a local triad gang and quickly forges a reputation as a no-nonsense fighter who is a more than able foot soldier. His progress is quick and before too long he is helping to run a triad operation. When Chow's considerable debts mean that he is 'visited' by the local thugs, Li jumps into help and swiftly dispatches the foes. As things reach fever pitch, Li is once again face-to-face with his former colleague who is now a fully-fledged triad leader. It is now Li's responsibility to put aside his personal feelings and take Wei to the authorities.

 

 

This interesting early Jet Li film has become increasingly hard to find on any format. Due to his new found popularity though, this may not be the case for much longer. To Li fans who haven't watched this yet, 'Dragon Fight' offers a good chance to see their hero in action. It certainly doesn't rank as his best, but it is still a solid action drama that has the added bonus of an early role for Chow Sing-Chi. It is intriguing watching two of Hong Kong's great screen treasures acting alongside each other before either were huge stars. The film suffers from inconsistent pacing with a good opening, a relatively slow middle section and an excellent climax - featuring some blistering fight action. This fact means that it cannot be regarded as a classic or even a 'must-see', but there are enough good reasons to watch this.

Distributor : Panmedia
Region : 0 (NTSC)
Running Time : 98 mins
Video :
1.85 non-anamorphic widescreen. This transfer appears to have been ported from a laserdisc print (most probably via a composite signal judging from the dot crawl in the opening credits) which would explain the slightly faded/soft focus look and lack of definition. Very minor print damage is limited to some speckles. A less than adequate DVD release but much better than one ported from VHS so it is still very watchable.
Audio :
Dual Mono English and Cantonese soundtrack with removable English subtitles.
Extras :
None.
Notes :
Despite having 12 chapters and a main menu, this bare bones DVD does not even sport a scene selection screen. The only purpose of the main menu appears to be for selection of the optional subtitles. However for some reason the navigation buttons on a stand-alone DVD player do not seem to work, so the subtitle button is required to toggle the subtitles on/off while the film is playing.
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