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DRAGON
FROM RUSSIA
AKA:
Crying Freeman: Dragon from Russia
Year:
1990 Reviewer: Phil
Mills
Yao
Long (Sam Hui) and May Yip (Maggie Cheung) are Manchurian
orphans who have relocated to Russia. As they grow up
together they begin to fall in love and promise each other
that they will never part. Youthful promises though are
often hard to keep and when Yao witnesses a murder he is
abducted by a mysterious group of assassins called the 800
Dragons. They employ blood draining techniques to
force him to lose his memory before training him in ninjitsu
and martial arts to make him into a highly skilled killer.
Forced
to become an assassin, Yao is sent of several highly secretive
missions but on one such outing his face is seen by none other
than May so he is ordered to kill the remaining witness.
However, seeing the familiar face triggers Yao's memories and
when he fails to kill May the 800 Dragons put out on a
contract on his life. Now, Yao must use the skills
taught to him by the organisation to fight to become a truly
free man.
Of
all the remakes of the manga 'Crying Freeman', 'Dragon
from Russia' must be one of the most disjointed. Despite
obvious similarities with it's source, the plot of the film is
extremely muddled and jumps around so much that you can barely
follow it. This confused approach tends
to severely hamper your enjoyment of a film
with obvious story potential and can perhaps be attributed to the use of
multiple directors (or should I just point the finger directly
at a certain Dean Shek?). However, there are signs of
improvement once the second half of the film approaches
(and the majority of the action kicks in) as the holes become less apparent and it is possible to put the glaring
faults to one side and enjoy it for the entertainment value
alone.
Sam
Hui as Freeman is an odd choice to say the least, especially
when you consider his predominantly comedic background, but it
seems even stranger that
he opts to portray the lead in the style of an imitation Bruce
Lee. He utilises several familiar stances and battle
cries that are synonymous with Lee which add nothing to his
performance and only aid the film's confusion. This
isn't to say that he is technically bad though as he is still
a very capable actor with obvious skills in the action
department but it just seems like a very
puzzling approach to take. On the other side of the acting
spectrum, Maggie Cheung is criminally under-used and it seems
like a waste of her immense talent to have her play a simple
damsel in distress. All she really has to do here
is constantly scream out the name of the hero
and get herself into sticky situations.
The
real talking point for this film remains the action
which forces the plot to take a back seat (definitely a good
thing here). The fight choreography from Yuen Tak is
nothing short of superb and is littered with everything from
acrobatics and impressive kicking combinations to dazzling
weapon work. Some of the most memorable highlights that
spring to mind are a blindfolded nunchaku
battle, torch lit
pole fighting and an excellent church shoot out where Freeman
leaps around from all corners of the building to
take out his opponents. So there you have it, not only
well choreographed but original as well!
To
sum it up then, 'Dragon from Russia' is a group of excellent
fight sequences strung together by a rather muddled plot and
some odd casting. Perhaps if the
producers had followed the original story more closely it
could have risen to greatness but as it is, the story forces
it to remain an average affair.
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