The Last Dragon is a film with a lot of promise that ultimately Fizzles out. At an hour and 40 minutes it's just too freaking long.
And the worst part is it's a pretty easy thing to fix.
Just remove some of the dance numbers and you could bring that time right down.
At first I was kind of intrigued by them (the songs) they were these weird little moments that would pop up in contrast to the weird Kung Fu atmosphere that already existed within the film.
Everything fell really disconnected because the comedy element as if they were trying to do this weird 'Escape From New York' atmosphere but in a land that clearly isn't destroyed.
But then the film continues and it turns into the story of a weird martial arts Prodigy interacting with this Pop-Stargirl forming a weird relationship after he rescues her a few times.
Oddly enough that's fairly common in other martial art movies too.
And I just found myself incredibly just interested in here.
Don't get me wrong I wanted to like this.
I really like Taimak performance. He plays this young naive fighter with a kind of disconnected Bruce Lee inspired attitude and I would almost call him a Bruce Lee want-a-be except for the fact that he really does live is life vicariously through Bruce Lee's movie personas.
To such an extent that he exhibits all the weird personality quirks that you would come to expect from a typical Bruce Lee character. He wholeheartedly believes them even though the rest of his family are fairly basic New-Yorker who run a pizzeria down in one of the New York's 5 boroughs.
Which does kind of make his character seem slow; Even though he's technically not.
And his younger brother is just a weird little perverted kid who constantly talks about sex with his friends and is really out of place and weird in this movie.
Not that I'd want to hear it in the other film either.
Maybe all this can be forgiven especially considering the major villains in this movie are an underboss business tycoon that feels like a halfway mix between two-bit gangster and Gene Hackman Lex Luthor and this other karate guy who for all intensive purposes looks like a freaking Klingon. He's got the puffy weird hair like a Klingon, he's got that foomanchew moustache and even his martial arts garb looks like a typical Klingon battle suit.
He's probably the best thing about the entire film. He's cocky and determined to make the protagonist fight him and is the only reason I kept watching this film as long as I did.
The build-up between him and our Prodigy child is intense and entertaining. It's just a shame that everything else around it is kind of lame.
I guess when I was hoping to get here was a martial arts film that had the occasional bit of silliness but was honestly just Taimak inserting himself as a wannabe Bruce Lee character and fighting other various Goons.
But that's only just one aspect of the film and everything else is so dis-interesting to me. I think the guy pretending to be an eccentric Lex Luthor could have been more fun. I just wish he was plugged into a different plot.
I didn't really like this movie but I wouldn't say it's bad. If you like 80s pop music, over the top silly characters and the occasional kung fu fight then you should find this movie to be right up your alley. I hope you enjoyed more than I did.
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