ipkevin Wu Xia is the best film in Donnie Yen's filmography. It may not have the most fights or be the most rah-rah crowd pleasing, but it's easily the best directed & most complete movie he's ever made. Huge credit has to go to director Peter Chan. He gives the film a remarkable sense of style that reminded me of early 1990s Luc Besson (when Besson was one of the most stylish directors in the world). Gorgeous visuals, weird yet perfect music, and a quirky rhythm all come together with an interesting story to form a highly compelling film that feels like no other kung fu movie out there.Don't get me wrong: It's not empty style. Every scene successfully conveys the emotion/feeling it's supposed to convey. There's no moment that rings false or feels like it could've been done better. Frankly, director Chan tells the story so effectively that it makes most of Yen's other films feel amateurish in comparison. The incredible style applies to the fights as well. Frankly, the film's fights set a new standard: They manage to combine the intricate choreography of old school wushu kung fu scenes with the hard hitting MTV style of modern Hollywood action without losing what makes either of them good. You can see all of the choreography clearly, but you also get that awesome hard hitting, kinetic MTV sense of style, yet there is no shaky cam or seizure-inducing editing! There is a big chase & fight scene about half way through this film that would be entertaining for most people, but for a student of kung fu cinema, it should be recognized as game changing filmmaking. Bottomline: Donnie Yen's best made film and a new high watermark for the wushu genre.

KineticSeoul With a title like "Dragon" that has Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro in it. I was expecting some grand or epic martial arts movie, with lots of battles and fight sequences...That is what this movie is. So if your an audience member that is expecting a lot of fight sequences you might be disappointed. This movie is a bit of a slow burner that has a message. Which is about what is right, the law of the land or if humanity, empathy and redemption. And how sometimes your past can comeback to haunt you. The two main leads really work together as opposites that comes to an understanding. The story is nothing all that special and it has been done before, but I did like the execution and the direction of this movie. It's simple and yet it has enough to make it stand out for what it is. It's a forgettable movie, but it's still a good enough slow burner of a movie.6.5/10

SnoopyStyle It's 1917 Liu Village, China. Liu Jin-Xi (Donnie Yen) is a paper maker in the small town. One day, two violent criminals come to town and Liu Jin-Xi kills them. Everybody believes they were accidentally killed, but Detective Xu Bai-Jiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is convinced that Liu Jin-Xi is actually a kung fu master.The premise is reminiscent of 'A History of Violence', and gets its inspiration from Yu Wang's 'The One-Armed Swordsman' (1967). Yu Wang is also in this one. The story of the wife played by Wei Tang is amazingly compelling. The detective is also more than a simple policeman. He is a strict legalist. He doesn't bend. His convictions have a dark beginning, and a dark result. The character relationships are complicated.The action isn't the normal kung fu movie for the first half. For action fans, the second half has enough to satisfy. But it's not just a simple action thriller. This is a character study, and a Greek tragedy.

DeathToPop The movie starts out with Liu Jin-xi doing his job as a paper hanger in 1912 China. Working at a clients' store replacing the rice paper windows, he's at the wrong place at the wrong time as two criminals enter demanding money. Deciding to be more than just a bystander he helps and by luck kills his opponents or so it seems.Enter Xu Bai-jiu, a medical expert and detective who despises his own overgrown sense empathy to the point where controls it through acupuncture while treating his body after nearly being poisoned from an earlier case where he let a thief go out of pity. Here we are also introduced to his alter-ego, a darker part of him that he attributes to his near death experience or is it a madness he brought on himself through acupuncture?Xu Bai-jiu sees more going on than the others through examining the bodies of the criminals, clues at the crime scenes, and interviews with the townsfolk. Unfortunately this is where the movie falls apart. Instead of sticking to the noir genre of a (self)tortured detective with the film sets itself up as, it just becomes another over dramatic kung fu film that takes itself too seriously.