Kiss of the dragon - 2001

Well... it wasn’t bad, it was half-nice... only because there was Jet Li in it and I like him, otherwise I wouldn’t have liked it much. The ending is ‘happy’ only because the ones we’re supposed to care about (him plus the girl and her little daughter) are alive, but these kind of movies don’t seem to care about all the others who died. The first third of the movie was slow and filled with evil, that’s why I didn’t like much that part. Then there’s a lot of escaping and fighting of course, it’s a Jet Li movie, there must be lots of fighting! and then the final, inevitable showdown that somehow feels... not really satisfying. Didn’t the bad guy call for ‘a lot’ of reinforcements? We saw a lot of movement, were did they all go?? 

Anyway, I rather liked the idea of him carrying lots of needles on his wrist as a sort of bracelet, that he uses as secret weapon to immobilise people or for whatever he might need at the moment. 

This movie, I read in the credits, is based on a story by Jet Li.

Well, time for details now:

Liu Jian arrives to Paris from Beijing, states that he’s here for tourism not business, then goes to a hotel where he meets a tough guy, Richard, while he’s evilly beating up a guy that one of the evil twins will then kill. We don’t know why, this is just to let us know that he may very well be an inspector but he’s also not a nice guy. 

Liu Jian is a Chinese special agent, he’s there to ‘help’ them to catch a Chinese drug lord. Thinking that they are all on the same team, sort of, Liu Jian surrenders to him his own gun. They all watch while two prostitutes are introduced to the Chinese people: the red-head girl feels sick and hides in the bathroom while the brunette provokes the target until he sends everyone out to be alone with the girls. She’s on drugs, and after a while she repeatedly stabs the guy. When he sees this, Liu Jian (that Richard calls John because he’s the evil guy and therefore has no respect at all)rushes inside the room to stop her, but then Richard also comes in, and using Liu Jian’s gun he shoots the man and also the brunette, to frame him, than he takes out his own weapon and wants to shoot him too but he already ran away. Liu Jian takes the surveillance video that shows Richard killing the man (before the tech guy managed to stop all recordings) and runs away with it. He has a sort of back-up plan in case of emergencies, so he goes to open a sort of safe-deposit-box, those that are found in stations (how should I call them?), and in one he finds a cellphone, and in another he finds lots of weapons, unluckily he didn’t know that so he opens it in front of some agents... so he has to run again, taking no weapons with him. 

Liu Jian finds refuge in a Chinese shop; the man he calls uncle is a man working for the Chinese government in some way, from time to time when agents like him are sent there he helps them with a place to stay. He has seen four agents die already and hopes ‘this one’ will have a different fate.

Jessica is stationed outside the shop, and asks Liu Jian to use their bathroom; he has to agree but since he didn’t recognise her he can’t wait for her to go away because he doesn’t want trouble, doesn’t want to attract any attention.

A Chinese Minister arrives, and his number one has many words of praise for Liu Jian, and he’s the one that contacts him through the newly-found-cellphone. The French Prime Minister tells them that Richard is their best policeman, and Richard tells them that Liu Jian went crazy and started killing, giving Liu Jian’s gun as proof. 

We see that it was Richard himself who sent the girls there (of course) and now he drugs again poor Jessica (who is not a red-head but a blonde). She wanted out, she wanted to stay clean, but he forces the drug on her and sends her back on the street to prostitute herself. He has her little daughter, so she obeys. 

Liu Jian gives the tape to the minister’s man, but the guy is immediately killed by Richard’s men who try to kill him too but fail. They have no problem shooting in a place full of people, and during the chase some innocents get in the way and take the bullets in his place. 

Now Richard has the tape. For some unknown reason he doesn’t destroy it but keeps it in his desk. 

Liu Jian has been injured; Jessica sees that and offers to help him sewing his arm. She does and they talk a little bit. When she’s about to go out ‘to work’, one of the man who own her, Lupo, comes in rather angry, mistreating her. Liu Jian asks him not to hit her ever again, and then gives him the money he asks for, supposedly because as he said before he doesn’t want to attract any attention, but then Lupo wants to hit her again so Liu Jian stops him and fights him and his men. One of the other prostitutes calls another man, Max, and when he arrives he recognises Liu Jian. He starts shooting, killing the poor ‘uncle’ before Liu Jian kills him. 

After a quick funeral for the old man, Liu Jian learns that Jessica was at the hotel the other night, she was the red-head, so now he wants her to go with him because she’s his only proof against Richard, the only way to save himself proving his innocence. Jessica cries that Richard has her little daughter, so Liu Jian offers her a deal, he gets her her daughter back and she helps him. Somehow Jessica decides to trust him; she goes back to Richard to lure him outside, telling him where he will find Liu Jian, but what she wants is for him to go away so she can steal all the tapes he has in his desk. He’s waiting for her outside. Richard handcuffed her before going out, but she manages to free herself on her own, took the tapes and went back to him (also taking his poor tortoise that he kept in his closed drawer and from time to time he played with her by putting her on her back poor thing). 

Now of course Jessica wants to go to get her baby back. She’s at an orphanage but when they get there, the bad guys got there first. She hasn’t seen her in almost a year but she has to wait some more. Liu Jian fights with the guys and they escapes with her. Inside the orphanage they all fought without weapons, but once they escape they remember that they have guns and shoot at them (well, at least in this movie they refrained from hurting and killing children at random).

Jessica is badly injured, so Liu Jian takes her to a hospital, while we see that her daughter is in Richard’s office. Liu Jian waits for her to wake up, he tells her that everything will be alright, but she cries saying that he doesn’t understand, her life is hell, Richard is the devil and he has her daughter, there’s nothing she can do and she trusts nobody to keep her safe, she only trusted him, he promised to take care of her daughter... so he puts her to sleep using a needle on her neck and then leaves. Leaving the needle right there. I mean, isn’t that dangerous? What if she turns in her sleep?

Anyway, he calls Richard and speaks to him until he looks out the window. Liu Jian is right outside, and now he knows where to find him and tells him that he’s going to get him. Richard apparently calls all possible reinforcements, but I don’t know maybe they don’t get there in time...

He fights everyone who happens to be on his way, at some point he unluckily enters a room where a lot of guys where practising martial arts and fights them all at once. Winning of course, but not killing them. 

The biggest fight is with the evil twins with blonde short hair. They are indeed good fighters, but like everyone in the world practising martial arts, specially non-Chinese, they do the come-here-gesture thinking they are like Chen, I mean Bruce Lee, and I always find this pathetic. It doesn’t matter if they are actually good, it’s still pathetic. They beat him up a little, then he motions for one of them to go to him instead because he’s in a narrow place where he has the advantage, but it doesn’t last long. Anyway he manages to break one’s neck, and then wins against the other too, of course. 

When he enters Richard’s office he is holding the child in his arms, of course, as a shield, threatening to kill her. Liu Jian tries to stall him long enough for him not to kill the child, then rushes towards him with his needles. Richard shoots him in the shoulder but he got him too, and worse. Liu Jian put a needle on the back of his neck, a specific point called ‘the kiss of the dragon’, a forbidden point because it does something to the man’s blood. Richard is paralysed even after he removes the needle. He suffers until his blood comes out of his face and he dies. But not before Liu Jian told the child to go wait for him outside, so she won’t see him. 

Next thing we see, Liu Jian is at Jessica bedside. She wakes up and finds that her daughter is sleeping right there at her left. She cries in happiness, while Liu Jian smiles. The end. 

Who patched him up this time?

Anyway, I could bare it only because I like Jet Li, otherwise I wouldn’t have liked it.