Li is fun to watch, but the plot is familiar, the characters are static, and motivation . . . what\'s that?
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It seems like only yesterday when Jet Li picked up where martial arts star Bruce Lee left off. But since his "Shaolin Temple" debut (1982), he's appeared in more than 30 films, most of them Hong Kong martial arts formula flicks. After a memorable appearance in "Lethal Weapon 4" (1998) came a bigger part in the mass-marketed "Hero" (2003), and you have to wonder if films like "Kiss of the Dragon" and "Romeo Must Die" helped him edge toward the mainstream by getting him out of Hong Kong and into a Western setting. In "Romeo" he played an ex-cop in San Francisco looking into the death of his brother and finding himself smack in the middle of a gang war. In "Kiss of the Dragon" he plays a top Chinese agent who goes to Paris on assignment and finds himself set up on murder charges.
If "Romeo" had too much talk and not enough action, martial arts fans can't complain about this one. "Kiss of the Dragon" feels like non-stop shooting and martial arts fights, all of them real except for two CGI-enhanced scenes-one where Liu Jian (Li) drops down a flaming laundry chute, and another where he kicks a pool ball out of a pocket and then launches it at his opponent with another kick. There are some nifty fights, one of them choreographed so that Jian works his opponents faces over with hot laundry-room irons, another with grenades, and a great scene in which he takes on three opponents in a baton/ebo fight. And yes, there are plenty of debilitating shots to the crotch. There's also a ton of indiscriminate shooting of automatic weapons in public, with the French police not all that concerned about passers-by. Most crucial to the story, there's also a band of acupuncture pins worn on the wrist by Jian, and inexplicably left on his person when he's frisked and relieved of his weapons. But hey, how else is this saga going to sail?
"Kiss of the Dragon" is based on a story by Li, so he had a hand in shaping the film. So did ("Leon, the Professional") Luc Besson, who co-wrote and produced it. Alas, there isn't the same depth of characterization as in "Leon," and the pairing with a female isn't as successful. Bridget Fonda seems wasted as a Parisian call girl who's trying to pay off a debt and get her daughter back. It's more the idea of the call girl that we're dealing with, because it just seems like a convenient excuse to give Jian more to do. Not much of a relationship develops between them-certainly nothing even remotely close to the tender relationship forged between Leon and his teen-aged protégé-and it really doesn't raise the emotional ante as much as you'd think it would.
Tcheky Karyo plays a wonderful heavy, but we don't get much backstory or information along the way as to why Inspector Richard sets up Jian in the first place, or what exactly is at stake. In one respect it's simple. He's set up Jian to take the fall for the murder of a Chinese contact he was supposed to monitor. On the other hand, it's confusing, because we don't really get much in the way of character motivation and situational background. We're just supposed to accept the fact that this top Chinese agent has been set up, that a prostitute who was on the scene when the murder was committed is also in danger, and that the two of them have to run from and/or fight the French police who are trying to kill them, thinking that he really is a murderer. Now, if you can live with that and live in the moment as these characters are doing, you'll find "Kiss of the Dragon" to be an entertaining martial arts film. If you want a little more feel for why people are doing what they're doing, or if you want characters to grow a bit along the way, you'll find it watchable but flawed.
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[release]19891[/release]