This may seem an odd choice for a review, but see this as a stopgap until my little special, a sort of 'versus' review of 'Bad Lieutenant' and 'The Killer Inside Me'. Until then, enjoy this. Dance of the Dragon is a 2008 production largely set in Singapore, and appears to be some sort of oriental-western fusion. You might have noticed the film is titled 'Dance of the Dragon', which makes it sound more exciting than it actually is. See that poster up there? It barely resembles the agonising mess the film actually is. Here's the synopsis from Amazon and the DVD case:
Reigning martial arts champion Cheng finds his relationship with dancing champion Emi threatened by the arrival of country boy Tae whom Emi mentors in dance. A fish out of water, Tae struggles to survive in the big city and is taken under Emi's wing. Soon student and mentor develop feelings for each other, leading to a showdown of furious martial arts that will resolve the passionate love triangle once and for all.
Sounds like cinematic gold, right? A love triangle with a martial artist and a dancer in modern day Singapore? Good solid romantic stuff with excellent chop-socky action. Except that it isn't. I have rarely seen a film with a running length of 100 minutes in which so little happens. I can tell you that a series of actors, the best of whom is easily Jason Scott-Lee as martial artist Cheng, are made to stare blankly into the mid-distance for ball-tenderizing lengths of time as they contemplate the plot while a melancholic yet repetitive piano score plays in the background. Every scene is desperately overwrought and painfully overlong. The first major event in the film is Tae (A borderline comatose Hyuk Jang) getting an audition with a dance school, and it is nearly 27 minutes before this even happens. The pace is treacle slow to the point it's going backwards in time; 'emotional' scenes of conflict between Tae and his father who really really doesn't want his son to go to dance school are repeated over and over again unnecessarily. It all takes a turn for the bizarre when he arrives at said dance school. As far as I know, dance academies are huge institutions, with expensive scholarships and punishing schedules - this one apparently does dance class for an hour or two every few days.
For a film that lasts so long, there is also remarkably little conflict here. Tae's main obstacle in his survival at the Singapore dance school is the need for a job. No problem; he turns up at a carwash, tells them he's fast, and BANG! He's employed. Fuck me, if employment was that easy, I'd be the prime-minister by now. There's little actual connection between any of the characters. The martial artist seems to have little actual chemistry with his so called girlfriend Emi, who has even less with Tae. Between them, they produce toe-curlingly dull romantic scenes which would usually best be served with Emi getting punched out of a window as Cheng nods in satisfaction at his handiwork. There's nothing wrong with a lengthy scene, but the romantic scenes between Emi and Tae are like being in Dante's seventh circle of hell; it just goes on, and on, and on and motherfucking on. Which brings me to the 'furious display of martial arts' advertised on the box, which I think is prosecutable under the trade descriptions act.
Get used to this image. You'll see a lot of stuff like this.
Said display lasts for two minutes, features no combat and relies on the bizarre notion that an amateur dancer can learn Shaolin martial arts from a DVD in a week. There is a final dance scene in which everything resolves itself, but eighty percent of the 'stunning' cinematography people have lavished on this film focuses above their waists so we can't actually see much of their dancing. They could be doing riverdance for all we know. Also, it's in slow motion, making an already slow film even slower, and it's done to a techno cover of 'Hero' by Enrique Iglesias. Take from that what you will.
I could go on, but I don't want to. I don't want to keep mentioning how the film sets up something promising and demolishes it, how the film thinks that endless mood shots a good film makes, how there are about five lines of dialogue in a film that simply demands more, how the film demands two of its main characters speak english and then hired actors who clearly cannot speak it well at all and I especially don't want to constantly drive home how jaw-breakingly tedious this bloody film is. It isn't a good character film, it isn't a good martial arts film and it isn't even a good dance film (if such a film exists). Watch it, if you must but if you're looking for a good film from the pantheon of asian cinema to watch, don't make it this one.
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