The last film to date from the spectacular team of childhood-classmates-turned-Hong-Kong movie stars Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao is a nonstop festival of fists, kicks, and comedy. It is in fact the only film in which the "three brothers" engage in free-for-all brawling with one
another, in a series of quick, hysterical interludes. Who cares if the plot is made of Swiss cheese? The film received its first official US release on home video in 1998.
When Miss Yip (Deannie Yip), owner of a fish-farm, sues chemical plant owner Mr. Hua (Yuen Wah) for polluting the environment, shady defense lawyer Jackie Lung (Jackie Chan) is hired to fend her off. He enlists his criminal friends Tung Tak-Biao (Yuen Biao) and Wang Fei-hsiung (Sammo Hung) to
help, but the two get off to a bad start and fight constantly. Meanwhile, Jackie falls for Miss Yip's lawyer-cousin, Wen Mei-Ling (Pauline Yeung), and Wang falls for Miss Yip herself. After the two men are revealed as frauds to their paramours, they switch allegiances to help the women. Wang is
captured taking pictures inside Hua's factory--which turns out to be a front for a narcotics racket--and Jackie, after quitting the defense team, comes to Wang's rescue with Tung.
Director Hung's timing is flawless, both in the marvelously paced fight scenes, which boast a hugely inventive use of physical space and props, and in the comedy, often the low point of Hong Kong action hybrids. Never mind that it all fits together clumsily and sometimes doesn't even make sense.
At one point the three antiheroes coincidentally meet Hua at a bar; suddenly a gang of thugs attack. Hua shrugs it off as one of his many enemies. But then we meet a whole new character, a gang boss who actually hired the thugs to kill Jackie. The thugs then return for a remarkable battle royale
on an empty cruise ship that Jackie has hired for lunch (!), then disappear entirely from the story, along with their mysterious boss. Bad exposition, but terrific fun.
DRAGONS FOREVER was a troubled production from the start. Chan was already a major star, and his friends Hung and Yuen Baio were resentful of working in his shadow. In addition, filming was rushed to meet the all-important Chinese New Year opening date. The main nemesis is played by the acrobatic
Yuen Wah, a graduate of the same Peking Opera school attended by the film's lead trio; Yuen's character is a virtual reprise of his effete villain from Hung's EASTERN CONDORS (1987). As in WHEELS ON MEALS (1983), martial-arts master Benny Urquidez was enlisted for a final-reel appearance to
provide the film with a rollicking climactic fight (he takes on Chan). Given all the film had going against it, one would expect a monumental failure, and indeed it got a lukewarm reception when it was released in Hong Kong in 1988, failing miserably in Japan, normally a hot territory for Chan.
The most likely contributing factor in its poor box-office reception was the surprising depiction of the three leads as fairly smarmy outlaws. In the west, however, it was received as a genuine action classic. (Violence, substance abuse.) leave a comment