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Review
by Kozo: |
If
Michael Bay directed a Hong Kong film, the result
would likely be Dragon Squad. This internationally-produced
and flavored action film from director Daniel Lee
(Star Runner) certainly looks good, and possesses
energetic action sequences and a glossy, professional
sheen that simply screams "quality". If
only that quality extended to the actual story and
characters. F4 member Vanness Wu stars as Hao, a Chinese-American
cop who joins forces with Hong Kong cop Lok (Shawn
Yue), former undercover policewoman Suet (Eva Huang
of Kung Fu Hustle), former British operative
James (Lawrence Chou), and Mainland sniper Lu (Xia
Yu). Together, these five young kickass cops form
the Dragon Squad, though they never get assigned that
awesome name in the actual movie. Instead they're
generally disregarded and told to get out of the way
like the meddlesome kids they are. It's like Gen-X
Cops crossed with Scooby-Doo.
Originally, the five
are ferried around to help bring a mohawked bad guy
to trial. Unfortunately, the bad guy gets nicked by
a group of international mercenaries, led by the American-Colombian
Petros (played by Michael Biehn of Aliens and The Terminator). Among Petro's ace bad-guy
group are Korean ex-soldier Ko (Huh Jun-Ho), and Vietnamese
sniper Song (Maggie Q), who sports pigtails like all
Vietnamese female snipers are required to do. The
group is really on a series of personal vengeance
trips: Petros is after a gang boss (Ken Tong) who
killed his brother, while Ko has a bone to pick with
cop Lung (Sammo Hung). After the group is cool veteran
cop Hon (Simon Yam), who's at odds with Lung over
a botched sting.
The Dragon Squad? They're
ignored by everyone else even though they're totally
hot and pretty damn skilled. The five show off their
ace skills by randomly attacking a shooting gallery
at a local bar. After scaring the local populace,
Suet decrees, "We make a pretty good team."
And they should, because they hail from every law-enforcement
acronym known to man, from the FBI to the SAS to the
SDU, OCTB, and probably the PTA. Each member of the
Dragon Squad gets totally cool flashy intros showing
their law-enforcement credentials, all accompanied
by a whiz-bang soundtrack and cool posing shots that
look like the opening credits of a TV show. These
nifty glamour shots return time and time again to
hammer home the obvious: these are pretty people who
kick ass.
The kids certainly get
enough chances to show their ass-kicking mettle. In
a rarity for a current Hong Kong film, Dragon Squad is loaded with helter-skelter action sequences, many
of which entertain in a bullets-flying mayhem kind
of way. The action scenes are also overdirected to
the point of distraction, with plenty of quick-cuts
and obvious attempts to make a routine action scene
look cool. Realism completely flies out the window
during these scenes: major characters only get shot
during wannabe-dramatic moments, and not during actual
firefights. Furthermore, the bad guys are deadly sharpshooters
EXCEPT when they face the Dragon Squad. This sort
of fakery is common action movie license, and anyone
who's seen a Hollywood film is likely used to such
stuff. But this is a Hong Kong action movie. Isn't
it supposed to be better than a Hollywood film?
Also like a Hollywood
film, Dragon Squad gives defining personal
issues to each of its major characters. Lok has an
ailing brother, Suet once fell in love while on undercover
assignment, and bad guy Petros actually seems to fall
for his quarry's former girlfriend, an insipid club
girl played by Lee Bing-Bing. Hao is recording this
mission for posterity. Why? Because according to Hao,
memory is false, and only by recording the actual
events of his life can he find real truth. Or something.
It's hard to swallow such pseudo-existentialism in Dragon Squad because all feeling in the film
seems false and perfunctory instead of natural. The
characters are uniformly uninteresting, and only achieve
sympathy or identity because of the actors playing
them. Ergo, Sammo Hung, Simon Yam, Huh Jun-Ho, and
even Michael Biehn carry weight, while Vanness Wu
and Shawn Yue are lightweight and colorless. Eva Huang
is notable as Suet because she's just so damn adorable,
and Xia Yu is likable because of his character's ill-developed
puppy love for Suet. Lawrence Chou achieves recognition
due to his facial hair. It's that kind of movie.
Dragon Squad may still prove attractive to many viewers thanks
to its numerous action sequences and name-heavy cast.
However, any entertainment gleamed should be of the
guilty and brainless variety. Thanks to its inane
plotting and uninteresting characters, Dragon Squad is nothing short of all-out bad, and could even make
one long for the legendary badness of Gen-Y Cops.
True, that film had a screechingly bad performance
from Edison "See you at the Jumbo" Chen,
but at least Gen-Y Cops had Sam Lee and Stephen
Fung around to provide a welcome dash of humor. Dragon
Squad has absolutely no sense of humor, and instead
serves up supposedly touching drama that's neither
touching nor dramatic. At the very least, Dragon
Squad doesn't take itself too seriously, such
that it rarely becomes all-out laughable. Still, if Gen-Y Cops is any proof, such badness can actually
make a movie more entertaining. (Kozo 2005) |
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