Dragons of the Orient

This documentary shows excellent archive footage of Jet Li's childhood and teenage performances in martial arts. We also get to see a variety of different kung-fu styles performed by various artists. These parts of the documentary is well worth a look if you're interested in performing martial arts or the history of martial arts.

However, the two narrators, who also show themselves every now and then and try to come up with something witty to say, just sound and look really stupid. Perhaps this is because of the English dubbing, but they really don't add anything to the documentary. They rather decrease the quality instead.

So in conclusion, if you want to see some of the different styles of kung-fu and learn some about the history of it, as well as see some footage of a young Jet Li, then this is a great source to seek out. You'll just have to ignore or fast-forward the parts where the narrators talk...

(1988) Dragons Of The Orient (In Chinese with English subtitles) DOCUMENTARY

After Jet Li became a rather popular martial arts actor in Hong Kong, a lot of other studios jump onto the bandwagon capitalizing his name. One in such producing this documentary about martial arts plastering a rather young Jet Li onto the front cover but is really on it for no more than 15 minutes, of a young Jet performing on front of Nixon during his visit in Washington sometime in the 70's! There's others martial artists, except that they are nobody's who do not get the same kind of exposure as Jet Li, his picture on the poster is strictly for promotional reasons nothing else.

This "documentary" about the origins of kung fu is interesting, but it is certainly no documentary. And it's not all about Jet Li. There is footage of Jet Li as a child, performing at various competitions, and some shots of him with his family. The closing segment has Jet Li doing "Drunken Sword Fist", a style I'd seen only in Jackie Chan's famous Drunken Master films.

The bulk of this movie is simply various kung fu students and masters demonstrating their skills, at a variety of locations and schools. A long central segment is devoted to the more exotic kung fu skills - chi levitation, wall scaling, tree punching, etc. The customary (and distracting) HK-movie kung fu sound effects have been overdubbed, and some of the footage has been sped up. And, while there is no plot per se, some kind of love story is attempted between the two narrators. Weird.

So don't expect to learn too much, but prepare to be entertained.

This "documentary" about the origins of kung fu is interesting, but it is certainly no documentary. And it's not all about Jet Li. There is footage of Jet Li as a child, performing at various competitions, and some shots of him with his family. The closing segment has Jet Li doing "Drunken Sword Fist", a style I'd seen only in Jackie Chan's famous Drunken Master films.

The bulk of the film is simply various kung fu students and masters demonstrating their skills, at a variety of locations and schools. A long central segment is devoted to the more exotic kung fu skills - chi levitation, wall scaling, tree punching, etc. The customary (and distracting) HK kung fu sound effects have been overdubbed, and some of the footage has been sped up. And, while there is no plot per se, some kind of love story is attempted between the two narrators. Weird.

Don't expect to learn too much, but prepare to be entertained.

Dragons of the Orient is less a documentary and more a montage of Kung Fu exhibition films thrown together. In between the Kung Fu clips the narrators of the film, a man claiming to be Jet Li's sparring partner and a woman claiming to be a newspaper reporter lead us on a selective tour of China, comment on the Kung Fu stars we're about to see, and try to outdo each other with their own Kung Fu moves.

The only acting in the film comes from the narrators, and in the dubbed version it comes off contrived, cheesy and overdone. If you've ever watched "The Simpsons", the narrators can be likened to Troy McClure in the documentary films Phil Hartman served as narrator for. They put a lot of ideas out there, and never really tie any of them together; at the end of the film the narrators try to conclude by putting conviction into the tone of their voice, while not really saying anything worthy of wrapping up a film/documentary.

As for the Kung Fu displayed in this movie it's often boring. We're treated to clip upon clip from the 1970s and 1980s of Martial Artists honing their craft solo, with an occasional light sparring with a partner thrown in every now and again. I'm not a fan of solo action as the air you're hitting doesn't hit back; this film had me bored throughout most of it.

There are a few points in this film that make it almost worth watching. If you're a fan of Jet Li you might be interested in watching the stock footage of him as a youngster demonstrating his kung fu skills with his friends and solo. There's some nice on location shots of the Great Wall of China, and a Shaolin temple which might appeal to people interested in Chinese history.

Only 2 scenes of kung fu in this movie entertained me. The first was a man using a "duck style" of Kung Fu. The style is quite whimsical and unorthodox, at times looking more like a dance routine that should be done to "Disco Duck". The second scene that was impressive was Jet Li doing a drunken sword solo routine. I've always been a fan of the drunken style and using a sword makes it all the more impressive. Jet Li pulls off the Drunken style quite well, I am surprised he has used it so sparingly in his Hong Kong released films.

Overall this movie is pretty boring, ocassionally you'll find yourself watching an interesting performer or interesting scenery. Bad narration spliced between old kung fu footage makes for a very poor documentary. 2/9 stars.