There's really not much to say about Dragon. It's a story that has been told before a million times over. You know the one, where a drifter comes across a town where no one knows about him or his checkered past. Where he meets a town girl, marries her, settles down and becomes a valued member of the community only to eventually and inevitably have his past catch up to him after he does a good deed. Yep, that's the story here except it takes place in this movie in 1917 China (you can see that same story played out in today's world in A History of Violence with Viggo Mortenson). Basically two big bad guys come into a butchers shop where the paper mill guy is repairing the paper coverings on the windows. The bad guys demand money from the elderly shop keeper and proceed to beat him silly. When the paper mill guy (who is cowering in a darkened corner by the way) can't take it anymore, he jumps in and seemingly gets his butt kicked. At least it appears that way at first.
He gets flung around the shop while hanging on for dear life to the main bad guys waist and refuses to let go. The fight, if you can call it that rages on and you feel bad for this paper mill guy after awhile. The second bad guy takes himself out and a lucky punch by the paper mill guy takes out the main bad guy. This man is lauded as a hero by the towns folk and he and his family are given great honors. It all begins to fall apart slowly though when the a cop comes to investigate the death of two men (this is the CSI part). He re-enacts the fight in his head and where you saw a bumbling man in over his head, the cop sees a martial arts master who easily dispatched the two bad guys with simple ease.
As the movie gets further along you come to find out that the cop was right, this paper mill guy IS a master and was at one time second in command to the most ruthless gang in China, the 72 Demons. He was running from the gang and it's leader when he happened to stumble onto that small village, met the towns girl, married her and had a kid. Breaking away from the gang wasn't easy, especially when the paper mill guys father was the leader of the 72 Demons. Needless to say father and son go at it in the end as they deal with some serious family issues. Papermill guy is played by Donnie Yen, his father is played menacingly by Yu Wang, the damaged wife is played by Tang Wei, and the detective is played by the talented Takeshi Kaneshiro. The performances were great and the story telling was inventive but when it was all said and done it's a story you've seen a million times before. And before you go in expecting this to be one of those Saturday afternoon king fu movies, STOP! There really isn't that much martial arts in this film. Three fight scenes, that's all you get so make em count!
The movies seemed choppy at times and wanted to take itself too seriously most of the time. It should have embraced the wackiness of the characters but it didn't. That would have made for a much more interesting film. I would skip it and wait for the DVD but if you do decide to see the movie then I'll see you at the theater!
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