If
Sammo Hung can do it for real, Donnie Yen can certainly pull off similar moves
wearing some extra padding. When a hot-shot Hong Kong cop gets reassigned to
the property room, he loses his trim physique, but he still has the same
skills. The 1978 Hung fan favorite gets a re-whatevering in the portly shape of
Wong Jing & Kenji Tanigaki’s Enter
the Fat Dragon, which opens this Friday in New York—but not in China, where
its theatrical release was canceled due to Xi Jinping’s super-proactive
handling of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Initially,
Fallon Zhu is the hardest charging cop on the HK force, but when he publicly
embarrasses his superiors, he is transferred from police work to evidence
warehousing. He is also dumped by his on-again-off-again fiancée, Chloe, a
semi-famous second tier TV actress. Sitting around depressed in the property
cage day after day leads to a lot of snacking. Despite the weight gain, he is
happy to get back into action when he is tapped to escort a prisoner extradited
(there’s a sensitive word in Hong Kong) back to Japan.
Of
course, his dodgy Tokyo PD contact quickly loses the prisoner, but Zhu gets the
blame, so he and his Chinese-Japanese interpreter go careening through Tokyo in
search of the fugitive (frankly it often doesn’t look much like Tokyo, but so be
it). He will also have the help of his former junior-now senior’s goofy
expatriate chestnut-hawking pal Thor. Plus, as fate would have it, Chloe is
also in Tokyo to make promotional appearances at the behest of the Yakuza front-man
pulling all the strings.
The
humor of Fat Dragon is definitely
goofy and slapstick, but as his own action director (with choreographers Hua
Yan and Tanigaki), Yen composes some gloriously loopy fight sequences that
could very well equal those of vintage Jackie Chan movies. There is some
incredible athleticism and acrobatics on display, much of which Yen performs
wearing Santa Clause padding.
Not
surprisingly, in the brief moments Wong and Tanigaki try to get serious, the
film suddenly gets kind of painful. Nevertheless, Yen and Niki Chao Lai-kei
have the kind of manic energy bickering and bouncing off each other that would
have pleasantly confused Howard Hawks. Lawrence Chou makes a problematically
bland villain when it comes to scheming and sneering, but he has the chops and
physicality to hang with Yen throughout their big beatdowns.
Fat Dragon amusingly spoofs
classic scenes from Yen’s own films, as well as those of Bruce Lee and Jackie
Chan, but the attitude is old school Chan all the way. Frankly, it is uncertain
whether Hong Kong police thrillers will have an audience and a future going
forward, given the documented widespread and pervasive police brutality
unleashed against the young democracy protestors—and anyone else who happens to
be in the vicinity (80% of the population exposed to tear gas). However, since
Fallon Zhu is essentially a HKPF outcast pursuing justice in Japan, Fat Dragon still sort of gets away with
it. Hong Kong could use a laugh and this film obliges. Recommended for fans of
over-the-top action comedy, Enter the Fat
Dragon opens this Friday (2/14) in New York, at the AMC Empire.
