Dragon Lord (1982)

Movie Info

Let’s play a game of shuttle-cock soccer!

Dragon (Jackie Chan) is part of a popular sports team and lives the free life going after women.  Between his training and his gaming, Dragon does have time to get into trouble.  When he accidentally makes himself the target of a gang of thieves, Dragon must battle his way to freedom and stop the thieves once and for all.

Directed by Jackie Chan, Dragon Lord (龍少爺 or Long xiao ye) also sometimes goes by the title of Dragon Strike.  The movie is considered one of Jackie Chan’s transitional films and was originally intended to be a direct sequel to The Young Master (with the title Young Master in Love).  The movie is often included in bigger Jackie Chan collections.

Nobody schools Jackie Chan!!!

Jackie Chan has been around a long time and this is one of those films that might not be as familiar to American audiences, since it was before Chan make his big jump to American films.  The more traditional martial arts film is a little slow and quite unbalance…and probably not for everyone.

The story for the movie just crawls.  The first part of the movie just involves the sports team and Chan’s romancing attempts.  It takes forever to get to the thief storyline and by the time it does get there, it just feels thrown in.  The thieves do finally lead to a big showdown fight…but it is too little too late to save the movie.

Chan does demonstrate some of his early humor and his charm.  Dragon Lord just doesn’t feel very complete however and that could be due to the fact that it was meant to be a sequel.  The Dragon character doesn’t feel very developed here and the movie just seems to start with little background or fanfare.  People familiar with the first film The Young Master might enjoy this movie more than newbies.

Yeah! The bad guy is defeated now we can be funny again!

The movie’s big scene has to be the shuttle cock soccer game.  It isn’t a traditional martial arts scene (there isn’t fighting) and it involves the characters competing in a hands off game which essentially is a hacky sack sports game.  The scene allegedly took over a thousand takes to get right and it is rather impressive.  This movie and its combination of martial arts and sports was a major influence on the film Shaolin Soccer released in 2001.

I like Jackie Chan but I have to say that this isn’t one of my favorite films.  The movie does have its moments, but most of the fighting and martial arts scenes take too long to get going.  The plot just isn’t fun enough and is quite unbalanced in its humor and laughs.  If you have to watch a Jackie Chan film, you can find better ones.