Dragon Eyes

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source: Dragon Eyes

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How does Jean Claude Van Damme get back to stardom . After playing the title character very well and honestly in JCVD there's not much more scope after a former action movie star has played himself in a meta-fictional movie . So it looks like going back to obscure straight to DVD action thrillers for Jean Claude and as you'd expect he appears in the opening pre-titles sequence which features a protagonist newly arrived in jail where he has to prove himself to the other inmates that he's no wimpy push over . As the titles are shown with some hard ass rap track we find the protagonist park his car in the mean streets of a Latino quarter . Mr Protagonist gets in to fisicuffs with some bad mofos who want to cap his ass . Oh I forgot to mention that the protagonist is played by Cung Le not Van Damme who's role is fairly minimal here so if you've bought this DVD expecting 90 minutes of Van Dumb action then you're going to be rather disappointed As for myself I wasn't disappointed by the lack of the muscles from Brussels . Cung Le makes for a very likable hero and his little boy lost looks suit the character very well . In fact much of the first half of the movie is likable even if is very routine . Le's character Hong finds himself up against The Street Kings and The Eastsiders and congratulations to director John Hyams for having a gang that is exclusively composed of Latinos and their rival gang being composed of black homies because normally these gangs are more cosmopolitan than the French Foreign Legion and he brings some flourishes to the proceedings borrowed from Guy Ritchie Unfortunately Hyams has a rather serious problem with storytelling especially where the editing is concerned . The more the story continues the more it relies on flashback and this gets more confusing giving the impression Hong is busily working at his day job then the action cuts to his prison cell where he is being mentored by Van Damme . The more the story goes on the more ridiculous plot turns arrive . For example Hong is left for dead after being beaten to a pulp in front of a gang of corrupt cops , is placed in a coffin then miraculously gets resurrected without explanation . This ruins the film to a great degree because the first half had great potential

If you set out to make a movie along these lines, learn from the mistakes made in this one. What it did wrong primarily appeared to be equivalent to some omissions in editing, some guy comes out of left field in a fight scene to help the protagonist, for one, and another problem was a story-line issue, the too well done realism in some scenes vs. the unreality of drug dealers not shooting someone and instead resorting to fists. That pretty much nails it for the most part besides some cheese factor in the flash-backs to learning from the master. What it did right was that over all it was sort of a good idea for this genre and the unarmed combat was good and tried to be realistic, and it was not over done, that is, not every scene was a fight scene and I thought the blend of all that meshing together was good. Real fights with real bad a@@es don't tend to last very long. Kudos on this. Most importantly I watched it to the end, so they did something right, I dunno, maybe the lighting guy or the camera man or caterer or something.

JCVD Jean-Claude Van Damme is finally the master who does the teaching. What this is at the core is Yojimbo, or Fistful of Dollars, or even Last Man Standing. A very classic story in which a stranger comes to town, and either plays both sides against each other, or convinces the more logical folks to join him. Cung Le is really good in this as the quiet stranger, and there is just enough of the prison flashbacks to fill in the whole backstory, I found that I really did Enjoy this which at the start I would not have expected. Peter Weller is exactly the character that he has played in every other show for the past 3 years or so, a dirty cop kingpin, and compared to his lot in Burn Notice this is more fitting, closer to the character he plays on Sons of Anarchy. So all told, and tightly wrapped up I would recommend this After Dark movie, they do make a few good ones now, and again. However I would only recommend this to guys looking for a brainless action movie that will make you feel smart, and able to keep up. There is not a lot here for anyone else though, any of those other movies I mentioned would be a better choice, though this is not completely without merit as I have said.

I didn't expect this movie to be top class but at least I had hopes for it be pretty entertaining. It turned out to be one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. Perhaps the biggest problem is the main character played by Cung Le. He is probably the most uninteresting and boring main character ever. He rarely speaks at all and his face appears to have about 2 different expressions to choose from. There are attempts to bring the character depth by using flashbacks but with a horrible execution. The plot is super thin and a couple of side plots also exists but they add nothing and leads nowhere. Another thing that rarely get any worse is the acting which is horrific from basically everyone in this movie. But the most annoying thing is the music and sound editing and several times I felt the urge to press the mute button. The fight scenes isn't that good either, perhaps not the worst I have ever seen but far from saving the movie. If your thinking of watching this movie because JCVD is in it you should know that he hardly does any fighting and he only appears in flashbacks. A bigger role for him might have lifted the movie to at least being watchable. It doesn't get much worse than this, or at least I hope it don't. The movie is 91 minutes long, I strongly advice you to spend that time more wisely then I did.