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Review
by Kozo: |
The
odd couple of Cecilia Cheung and Francis Ng lock horns
and hearts in director-writer Wilson Yip's unheralded
action-comedy The White Dragon. Cheung is Phoenix,
a gorgeous student who's all too aware of her own
drop-dead good looks. While running with her pack
of chatty school pals, she declares that Second Prince
Tian Yang (Andy On) is the only man worthy of being
her lover. She gets to woo her dream guy when he attends
her music recital, an anachronistic performance with
Cheung as a solo Six Girl Band, complete with a rotating
complement of instruments and a Nicholas Tse-like
finale where she smashes her guitar. Tian Yang is
immediately smitten—which is no surprise since
it's Cecilia Cheung's exquisite visage making eyes
at him—and before you know it the two are rollerblading
around the palace and engaging in tennis matches.
Right away, you can tell that this is not a movie
to be taken seriously.
However, there's killing,
namely from famed assassin Chicken Feathers (Francis
Ng), a blind swordsman who announces his presence
with sudden flurries of—you guessed it—chicken
feathers. Thanks to convenient exposition, it's revealed
that Chicken Feathers only kills people who deserve
it. However, one of Chicken Feather's assignments
gets him a run-in with the White Dragon, a masked
superheroine who gets soundly trashed by her sight-impaired
foe. Luckily she's able to transfer her power to the
closest person: Phoenix, who subsequently takes up
the mantle of the White Dragon. The reason: to get
rid of her acne. You see, her new powers muck up her
skin, but helping people gives her a good feeling,
which should stimulate blood flow and zap her zits,
thereby averting disaster at her upcoming date with
Tian Yang. Again, this is not a movie to be taken
seriously.
Not that The White
Dragon begs to be taken seriously. Aside from
obvious anachronisms (a reference to McDonald's seals
the deal on that one), The White Dragon also
features over-the-top nineties-style swordplay from
action choreographer Ma Yuk-Sing, and an entirely
too quirky performance from Francis Ng. The talented
actor plays Chicken Feathers as a blend of Takeshi
Kitano's Zatoichi and an Adam Sandler character, a
combo that sounds like instant death on paper. Surprisingly,
it isn't; Ng shows subtle charisma as Chicken Feathers,
and makes a charming lovelorn dope. His character
falls for Phoenix/White Dragon when she breaks a limb
and he nurses her back to health. The extended sequence
where Phoenix is trapped with Chicken Feathers could
bore some people, as its little more than Francis
Ng and Cecilia Cheung hanging around together. Still,
these are two of Hong Kong's more facile actors, and
given their roles here (Cecilia Cheung as a gradually-softening
material girl, and Francis Ng as a quirky jiang
hu hero), the two manage to make things work.
In the hands of lesser actors, the scenes could potentially
bore or annoy, but these are not lesser actors.
The offbeat pairing
of Ng and Cheung makes The White Dragon a welcome,
though paper-thin amusement, especially since the
rest of the film is completely inconsequential. Wilson
Yip concocts a fairly simple and even cloying costume
action-comedy, with many minor gags that are more
giggles than all-out laughs. The action is confined
to small, short sequences that are competently choreographed,
but lacking in anything resembling power or excitement.
To compensate, Yip adds egregious sound design that
dresses up the usual swordplay clangs and swooshes
with turbocharged, videogame-like sound effects. Still,
the result is ultimately more distracting than exciting,
and could easily have been done away with. If Yip
was trying to make the martial arts sequences play
better, he could simply have made them more interesting.
Even more, the big drama
of The White Dragon is not who's going to kill
who, or who's the best swordsman in the land—it's
who will the get the girl. The White Dragon
pushes romance instead of action as the film's primary
drama, which will probably turn off anybody who checks
out the film's poster and thinks its going to be House
of Flying Daggers redux. True, HOFD also
had a central love storyline, but it mixed in tragedy
and overdone romantic histrionics with its flying
martial arts mania. The White Dragon has only
sporadic flying martial arts, low key romance, and
comparatively little overdone histrionics. Your standard
urban romantic comedy may have more edge than this
ultra-light exercise in commercial filmmaking.
Yet, all of the above
are negatives only if you're expecting something specific.
Those wanting more action and blood will be unhappy,
and those looking for heartrending romance will be
out of luck too. It's questionable if fluffy, heartgrabbing
romance would work with Francis Ng anyway, since he's
not exactly the most cuddly actor around. And if you're
looking for true comedy, Cecilia Cheung is probably
not your best choice. She's a remarkably sound dramatic
actress, but her comedic acting is usually obvious
and unsubtle. Wilson Yip has made a film that simultaneously
works with and against his lead actors, which ultimately
renders The White Dragon as little more than
a hodgepodge distraction filled with watered down
Hong Kong Cinema iconography. But in spite of Yip's
inconsequential piecemeal filmmaking—or hell,
maybe even because of it—The White Dragon
does manage some minor low key entertainment. It's
fun to see even small flashes of early-nineties style
action, and Ng and Cheung are predictably watchable.
As current Hong Kong Cinema goes, The White Dragon
qualifies as a minor little surprise because it mixes
the familiar with the modern in a non-offensive, relatively
pleasing manner. And while that may not sound like
a recipe for success, it sure beats The Twins Effect
II. (Kozo 2004)
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