Guest Column: An Early Dragon Blade (2015) Review

Ever since reading early articles about it on this website I had a feeling, or maybe more of a forlorn hope, that this movie might be worth checking out, so when it finally opened over here on Thursday (Chinese New Year’s Day) me and the missus duly went to give it a look.

The film opens in the present day. The only reason for this seemed to be an attempt to give the dubious historical aspect a bit more credibility. Two young ‘Relic Hunter’ types discover the ruins of an ancient Roman City somewhere in the blizzards of (presumably) Northern China, and use high-tech gadgetry to digitally map what the city would have looked like in it’s prime.

With that bit out of the way, the rest of the movie (apart from the last couple of minutes where we wrap things up with aforesaid archeologists) is told in flashback. Actually there’s a lot of flashbacks in this movie – flashbacks within a flashback, but it works well enough to fill us in on the back-story here and there.

Jackie Chan’s character, Huo-On is the leader of a small band of state-sanctioned peacekeepers trying to maintain order in the region of the silk-road, resolving disputes between the various tribes operating there. But, sadly, resolving them as peacefully as possible and without actually hurting anyone. Early on there’s a fight between a reluctant Jackie Chan and a beautiful, but highly-strung, Asian girl with a violent disposition. In a trademark bit of Jackie Chan humour, the girl takes a fall and lands with her petite little bosom right in Jackie’s hands, to her angry humiliation and his goofy consternation.

The first half hour or so is the kind of average (rather boring) Chinese period action stuff that’s a mainstay of popular Chinese cinema (in China at least) as Jackie’s band of merry men are framed for smuggling gold coins and then sent to do hard labour repairing the walls at a remote fortress. That’s when John Cusack’s character comes in. Leading a rag-tag and half-starved group of renegade Roman soldiers who are literally dropping like flies, he appears outside the fortress bringing with him a sickly, blind child that he’s pledged his life to protect. Now we all know that kid’s can be annoying in movies but this golden haired little cherub takes that to a whole other level – his soppy delivery had me gritting my teeth in embarrassment for everyone on the screen every time he opened his mouth.

Anyway, after a face to face, or maybe I should say sword to sword, duel with Chan, Cusack begrudgingly puts down his arms and accepts Chan’s offer to let him and his men into the fortress before an impending sandstorm buries all of them.  This display of generosity to a gang of hostile attackers seemed a tad unrealistic to me, but hey-ho, Chan is definitely not doing his Mr Nice Guy persona any harm with this one – he acts like a mild-mannered and kindly uncle throughout.

Over the course of some fairly cringe-worthy dialogue Cusack and Chan rapidly become best pals and Cusack agrees to help the Chinese finish repairing the walls of their fortress with a little Roman building know-how. There’s also some friendly sparring, which leads to some gambling, much to everyone’s delight.

At times Cusack looks bored, other times he seemed not to care too much. To be fair some of his dialogue is horrible, with bad jokes thrown in to boot, although the Chinese audience I saw the film with all laughed out loud several times (and in the right places).

Patriotism is a recurring theme – there’s a long scene where the Romans get all bleary eyed whilst singing the Roman national anthem.

Now Brody comes in. To be honest I thought he played his part pretty well, in a sleepily sinister and at times half mad kind of way. He’s a corrupt Roman General (albeit with many more troops on his side than John Cusak’s character has) who murdered his father and blinded his kid brother – the boy that Cusack is protecting.

To cut a long story short, Cusack and his small group of loyal soldiers and Chan and his men join forces to take down Brody, who, it turns out was behind Chan getting framed and exiled to hard labour in the first place, culminating in a short fight between Jackie Chan and Adrien Brody.

There were times when I lounged frustratedly in my seat, other times when I laughed (though not when the film makers intended) and, to be honest, a few moments when I genuinely enjoyed the film.

One bit of unintended humour was in the climactic battle scene towards the end. Every time Jackie Chan gave an order, one of the faithful Roman soldiers repeated it in an enthusiastic shouty voice for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t heard, like this:

Jackie Chan: “We can use the rocks”
Shouty Roman Solider: “– USE THE ROCKS!”
Then a little later…
Jackie Chan: “We take the hill”
Shouty Roman Soldier: “TAKE THE HILL!”
Then when all hope seems lost…
Jackie Chan: “We die together”
Shouty Roman Solider: “DIE TOGETHER!”

To be fair, some of the big fights are quite good, with Roman soldiers surrounding people, fencing them in with their shields, then plunging the big swords in. There’s also a few slow motion shots of people spewing out lung-fulls of bright red blood thrown in for good measure.

I thought one of the strongest action sequences was a lethal exchange of arrows across a courtyard. When Jackie Chan has to go back to rescue somebody who was hit, he uses a table to cover himself. By the time he’s finished the table is pinned to his back by a couple of arrows which have gone through the table and into his body. There was also a cool shot of a dead body suspended several inches off the ground in a macabre kind of way by all the arrows stuck in it.

To conclude, it’s a bit of a frustrating movie which has at the very least a few amusing highs, but also some boring lows and some downright cringe worthy parts. On the whole, I’d give it 5 out of 10.

– Jake