Review of Legend of the Red Dragon (1994) by Steven V — 26 Mar 2009

Instead of an overly serious martial arts movie, Legend of the Red Dragon doesn't take itself at all seriously and this is its greatest strength. Despite the recent success of Crouchig Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it was not impressed by this movie.

It featured too many way over the top stunts and the plot was amazingly serious and artistic. But here, because the plot and writing are so silly and it's all done tongue in cheek, you can more easily accept the ridiculous but spectacular stunts.

While not quite as silly as Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, it was close and surpassed it in plot, excitement and grandeur. In addition, the idea of pairing Jet Li with an amazing child kung fu master was pretty funny because the child's talents were so ridiculously amazing and impossible.

Additionally, while Jet Li played his part very straight, so many of the supporting characters were again pretty cartoon-like. The movie is a wonderful combination of great technique, expert filming and silliness that will thrill lovers of kung fu movies.

Unlike Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee's movie, this movie involves far less punching and kicking, relying instead on the amazing use of weaponry and silly physics. By the way, the film is rated R, but I think it could easily been rated PG-13 as the violence wasn't that extreme and there was no nudity or excessive foul language.