Dragon Blade

DRAGON BLADE isn't a great film at all, but given that the previous Jackie Chan film I watched was Chinese ZODIAC, it seems somewhat acceptable by comparison. Certainly it's a messy movie, which is typical of Jackie's more recent efforts, but it has some good stuff included alongside all of the tat. The story is supposedly based on historical fact and involves some Roman soldiers who traverse the Silk Road and find themselves in China. They're split into two factions, the small number of good guys and the overwhelming bad, and the good guys end up joining forces with Jackie and his men to fight the enemy. What DRAGON BLADE boils down to is a heady mix of laughable sentiment, Chinese comedy, war and battle sequences, and some very bad acting.

Jackie himself doesn't really seem to do much that's new in this film. The director throws in a few of his old-fashioned fight scenes to recall his glory days, and while the action is acceptable, it's never memorable. It's the western actors who do surprisingly well: Adrien Brody as the quietly menacing villain, and John Cusack as the likable ally. Some of the set-piece sequences are well-handled, like the building of the defences, and the large-scale action at the climax is quite a lot of fun. I was glad to see that director Daniel Lee has calmed down since the days of DRAGON SQUAD and can now direct reasonable fare like this and THREE KINGDOMS: RESURRECTION OF THE DRAGON. DRAGON BLADE isn't perfect by any means, but there's a good film hiding underneath the mish-mash of styles and ideas.