Anyone
who seriously studies martial arts learns more than just fighting. Students are
trained to resort to physical fighting only as a last resort, but they build
the sort of confidence and poise that should make the belligerent party equally
reluctant to make good on their threats. Unfortunately, one expatriate student
has difficulty learning those lessons in Vimal Vaz’s martial arts short film, Jade Dragon (trailer here), which releases
today on digital VOD.
Rufus
is a talented student, but his competitiveness becomes so disruptive, his sifu
Ming Yu has no choice but to expel him. Inevitably, this pushes him further
towards the dark side of the Force. While on a drunken bender, Rufus accosts
Polly, stealing her heirloom Jade Dragon pendant. Feeling victimized, she
initially withdraws into herself, but one of her Cantonese tutoring students
also happens to train with Ming Yu.
She
recommends Kung Fu lessons, not just for self-defense purposes, but as a way to
balance her energies and restore her confidence. Ming Yu agrees to take her on,
even though she is also facing a crisis of confidence, having never completed
her training with her master father. Of course, Rufus is still out there and
the Hong Kong martial arts world is quite small.
Although
there is a good deal of sparring and fighting in Jade Dragon, it is more about the restraint and spiritual learning
that is supposed to come with martial arts training, which makes for a
refreshing change. It also gives viewers a gritty street level feel for old
school Hong Kong. At one point, the film takes us into the school of real life
Wing Chun Grandmaster Wan Kam Leung, which feels like a time-warp back to the
glory days of Bruce Lee and Ip Man (or so we’d like to imagine).
Aside
from Vaz himself, who plays the fierce-looking Rufus, the ensemble is made up
entirely of newcomers. They might be a little rough around the edges, but there
is something compellingly real about them. When Minna Cheung’s Polly starts to
become empowered by her training, we really believe it is happening. As a
result, we’d like to see them settle in and explore these characters in a
feature or web series—which is probably the hope, given the rather open-ended
conclusion.
