Dragon Lord holds the world record for the most takes for just one shot, over 1,000 takes were shot for the shuttlecock sequence and when you see it you’ll know why (it had to take alot of skill to pull off).
Jackie plays Dragon, who is the son of a wealthy man and spends most of his days chasing around girls with his friend Mars “cowboy” and taking part in local sports events. But things heat up when mars tells dragon he fancies the local girl, who after seeing her also falls in love with her causing a small fued between the two friends (It doesn’t last long).
One day when he is out trying to send a love note attached to a kite, it flies in the wrong direction and lands on top of the place where the local villians are planning to sell off the countries national treasures. This scene alone shows how good jackie’s timing is as he dodgys,jumps and flips over spears just to get his kite back.
The gang go after Dragon and cowboy and this leads to a great finale where the main badguy of the movie shows himself played by Whang In Sik, the fight shows chan performing mad stunts and just straightforward punches and kicks just as he did in Young Master playing the same character. In a way he was showing here the style of martial arts which we would again witness in movies like Police Story and his more modern way of movie making.
Some of the best parts of the movie are at the beginning of the movie with a rugby-like game that has hundreds of competitors climbing a rickety bamboo cone to grab a ball on top. Later, Chan engages in a cross between soccer and badminton which is a great watch. The end fight scene also is a great watch with Whang In Sik showing again how good his kicking skills really are against chans street like style kung fu.
Originally intended to be a sequel to Chan’s 1980 hit The Young Master (as evidenced by its working title, Young Master in Love), Dragon Lord went on to become a standalone film, as Chan’s directorial excesses strayed further from his original intentions.
Reports indicate that chan would hire tons of stuntmen and shoot miles of costly footage only to abandon these intricate sequences on the cutting room floor. Dragon Lord was a costly flop for the box office champ and taught him a lesson about film that he wouldn’t soon forget.
Overall i enjoyed the movie, ok it isn’t as good as The Young Master or Drunken Master but the feel of the movie is good, the fights are pretty good and the stunts are crazy. Some good sequences involving the shuttlecock scene and the opening sequence which involved in jackie getting badly hurt which is shown in the credits.
[Rating:7/10]
