Kiss of the Dragon

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Movie
German title Kiss of the Dragon
Original title Kiss of the Dragon
Country of production France
original language English ,
French ,
Mandarin
Publishing year 2001
length 98 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Chris Nahon
script Jet Li ,
Luc Besson ,
Robert Mark Kamen
production Luc Besson,
Steve Chasman ,
Happy Walters
music Craig Armstrong ,
Chino XL
camera Thierry Arbogast
cut Marco Cavé
occupation

Kiss of the Dragon is a French action film from the year 2001 . The main roles are played by Jet Li , Bridget Fonda and Tchéky Karyo .

action

Liu Siu-jian, a Chinese police officer, travels to Paris to arrest a Chinese drug dealer. There he works with a special unit of the Paris police. The drug dealer is waiting to meet his French contact in a luxury hotel. To pass the time, two prostitutes are hired for him. The whole thing is followed by the special unit and its extremely choleric and cynical chief inspector Jean-Pierre Richard together with Liu on the screen. Sex with one of the two prostitutes ends fatally for the drug dealer and Liu, condescendingly called "John" by Richard, runs into that room and incapacitates the prostitute there, while the second does not take part in the whole thing because she is on the Toilet hold up. But suddenly Richard appears and shoots the prostitute, who had murdered the drug dealer with a hidden stabbing weapon, with Liu's weapon and so he falls into a trap and becomes a murder suspect. Richard turns out to be the contact who should meet the drug dealer and he also employs pimps and drug dealers. But Liu manages to escape with a video tape that shows exactly the murder that Richard wants to blame him for. He goes into hiding with his contact Tai in Chinatown, whom he pretends to be his uncle to cover himself up. There he met the friendly and helpful prostitute Jessica Kamen. Meanwhile, Richard combed Paris for the videotape, which would be evidence of his murder.

Liu arranges a meeting with the Chinese ambassador, but the police are following him and is killed during the meeting. Liu manages to escape again with a serious arm injury. The videotape comes back into Richard's hands. In Tai's hideout there is a shooting with Jessica's pimp, his extras and one of Richard's employees, who shoots Tai. Siu-jian escapes into the nightlife of Paris with Jessica. After an argument between the two, it turns out that Jessica is the prostitute who was in the hotel bathroom that other night while the murder was taking place. Liu asks her to help put Richard down, but she tells him that Richard is holding onto her baby daughter Isabel. Liu promises to free Isabel, and in return Jessica is supposed to help him hunt Richard. During the night the two sneak into the orphanage where Isabel lives, but there they get caught in a trap set by Richard. Jessica suffers a serious gunshot wound, but Liu manages to escape with her and he takes her to a hospital. He then storms the police station where Richard and his henchmen are holding Isabel. After a long fight, Liu comes into Richard's office, who is holding a gun to Isabel's head. But Liu overpowers him and sticks one of his acupuncture- like needles, with which he has overpowered numerous opponents, into his neck. The method is called "The Kiss of the Dragon". A prick at that point causes all of the blood to rise to the head but not to flow back into the body from there. Thus Richard dies a painful death with blood oozing out of his nose, mouth, ears and eyes.

Liu brings Isabel to her mother's hospital and frees her from her life as a prostitute.

Reviews

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 6, 2001 that he liked the film on a "simple physical level", even if it did not make any "deeper meaning". Ebert certified the film a certain "stylistic elegance" and praised Jet Li in the lead role.

Stephen Hunter wrote in the Washington Post on July 6, 2001 that one person is killed every minute in the film, but there is not even a full minute of suspense. He described the plot as a “weak pretext” (“feeble pretext”) for the brawls. He wrote that the film would improve in the last few minutes.

Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times on July 6, 2001 that the film was an offer for the "hardcore" fans of action films and compared it to the film Romeo Must Die . He compared the chemistry between Jet Li and Bridget Fonda to the chemistry between Ariel Sharon and Jassir Arafat . Turan praised some action scenes.

Johannes Pietsch described the film on www.filmstarts.de as “martial arts pleasure of the purest water”, which would take “the great classics of the genre” as a model. He praised the “big city setting” of Paris and compared the film to some of Bruce Lee's films .

The lexicon of international films wrote: "Dark and exciting crime film with believable main characters, enriched with numerous martial arts fights, but whose virtuosity is often drowned in hectic cuts."

backgrounds

The cost of producing the film was approximately $ 25 million and grossed approximately $ 64.4 million in theaters around the world.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Kiss of the Dragon . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2008 (PDF; test number: 88 625 DVD).
  2. ↑ Production information on the film
  3. ^ Review by Roger Ebert
  4. ↑ Review by Stephen Hunter
  5. ↑ Review by Kenneth Turan
  6. ^ Critique by Johannes Pietsch
  7. ^ Kiss of the Dragon. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 28, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ↑ Box office results for the film