Enter the Fat Dragon

From the film title you’ll be expecting something silly and largely filled with action sequences and this is exactly that. Yet the action sequences with Donnie Yen as lead protagonist has the usual Chinese martial arts flair, smooth, succinct, fast and unrelenting. The hand to hand combat is so much more exciting compared to western styles. There’s way less need for heavy editing, especially with Donnie Yen’s expertise. But sadly this is probably the only praiseworthy aspect as the rest of the film is just for laughs and just plain goofy, the relationships are so characteristic of the classic HK tv shows of recent times and overly exaggerated. Interesting to see a Chinese takedown of Japan especially with the final fight scene where Donnie Yen who in the moment channels a chubby Bruce Lee with nunchucks takes down the yakuza boss (Joey Tee) with sais. Almost feels like taking cultural vengeance against the past wrongs of Japan on Chinese people during the war. A nice chill and silly watch at the end of it all.

From the film title you’ll be expecting something silly and largely filled with action sequences and this is exactly that. Yet the action sequences with Donnie Yen as lead protagonist has the usual Chinese martial arts flair, smooth, succinct, fast and unrelenting. The hand to hand combat is so much more exciting compared to western styles. There’s way less need for heavy editing, especially with Donnie Yen’s expertise. But sadly this is probably the only praiseworthy aspect as the rest of the film is just for laughs and just plain goofy, the relationships are so characteristic of the classic HK tv shows of recent times and overly exaggerated. Interesting to see a Chinese takedown of Japan especially with the final fight scene where Donnie Yen who in the moment channels a chubby Bruce Lee with nunchucks takes down the yakuza boss (Joey Tee) with sais. Almost feels like taking cultural vengeance against the past wrongs of Japan on Chinese people during the war. A nice chill and silly watch at the end of it all.

A fever dream

A fever dream

I love Donnie Yen but this is ... not great the body politics in this aren’t perfect but honestly much better than you might expect given the title and premise like a lot of the humor comes from “haha he’s fat now” but in the end he never loses the weight and he’s still very capable with the weight weirdly this doesn’t even deal thaaat much with him having gained a bunch of weight? like it’s not reason his girlfriend leaves him, it doesn’t get in the way of him kicking ass, they don’t make thaaat many jokes about it etc it’s almost like this would work as a police story esque action movie without the fat part 

anyway this has a lot of bad cg and bad jokes you can probably skip it I’m glad I didn’t pay money for it 

ps Donnie Yen has floppy hair and a forty year old gf in this as if he’s not 57 years old

I love Donnie Yen but this is ... not great the body politics in this aren’t perfect but honestly much better than you might expect given the title and premise like a lot of the humor comes from “haha he’s fat now” but in the end he never loses the weight and he’s still very capable with the weight weirdly this doesn’t even deal thaaat much with him having gained a bunch of weight? like it’s not reason his girlfriend leaves him, it doesn’t get in the way of him kicking ass, they don’t make thaaat many jokes about it etc it’s almost like this would work as a police story esque action movie without the fat part 

anyway this has a lot of bad cg and bad jokes you can probably skip it I’m glad I didn’t pay money for it 

ps Donnie Yen has floppy hair and a forty year old gf in this as if he’s not 57 years old