Customer Reviews

Dragon Fist

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

...Some yahoo at the studio cut out almost 20 minutes from the already cut version, which runs 94 mins. I have to admit seeing it once again in widescreen, 2.35:1, with a pretty good print may be worth it. I guess it was for me. But, the 18 mins. missing make you wonder what the heck's going on when it just jumps to fight scenes for no reason whatsoever. And why is Chan doing what he's doing? (I'm not giving anything away). Buy the fullscreen version to get the full story. When I first saw this in the theater, some twenty years ago, it was a pretty good kung fu movie. Chan did not use wires and his fighting style was unique. This is a pre-comedic Chan. Nice to see a serious Chan. Produced by Lo Wei, the producer of a few early Bruce Lee movies.

During an awesome opening tournament scene with Hsu Hsia taking on all comers, he gets killed, and his student played by Jackie Chan goes to take revenge. He goes with his master's wife and daughter to find the killer. But when he gets there, we find out that this man is very sorry for what he did. There's a bit more to the story, but I don't want to give it away. It's not a great story, but darker than most kung fu movies. I didn't see Jackie smile once. He gives a great acting performance, and an even better fighting performance. This is the most hate I have ever seen from Jackie. No comedy, he just tears people up with his awesome kung fu.

Yen Shi Kwan, Eagle Han Ying, James Tien and Chui Fat also star, and they all give fine performances. This is the best I have ever seen James Tien look next to his performance in Bone Crushing Kid. Jackie worked him really hard on this movie.

3.5/5

The Columbia Tristar DVD has awesome picture quality, a good sounding Chinese dub, and the original oldschool English dub (not one of those crappy dubs you hear sometimes). This version is cut, so if you want to see it uncut you should get the PAL Hong Kong Legends version.

Dragon Fist has very well done choregraphy. This is one of his good films with Lo Wei. Jackie was in good physical shape at the time of this movie so there is some pretty sweet acrobatics. His amazing choreography ability shows in every fight scene.

This DVD (Columbia Tristar) has cut the film from its original 95 minutes to 75 minutes. But to make up for it, it does have the original widescreen aspect ratio (2:35:1) and the original Cantonese audio with English subtitles. Although sometimes fight scenes will happen without any explaination, and you don't really get the WHOLE plot. But for the most part, you know what's going on.

EDIT: THe best DVD of this film is that of Hong Kong Legends. It has the whole movie UNCUT with the original dialogue, English subtitles, and original aspect ratio. However, it's out of print, but it's still being sold.

Dragon Fist is a classic tale of redemption and butt-kicking. Even if you've never seen a kungfu movie before, chances are, you'll be familiar with the storyline. I don't want to give the story away, but realize it's the same sort of plot used in many westerns, only instead of cowpokes and gunfights, we have martial artists and kungfu showdowns.

Dragon Fist is an early Jackie Chan drama. It's a film he made before he created the genre of comedy chop sokki, and it shows not only can he do comedy, but he can also do a competent job at playing serious parts.

My only real qualms about this flick are the dubbing (not bad, but not great, either) and the film quality. The video and sound quality is particularly bad in the beginning fight sequence. The kungfu masters all look about ten feet tall and four inches thick. It's pretty stretched out. In addition, the sound is very muffled, and I had to turn the volume up quite a way in order to understand what was being said.

That being said, I do have one other nit-pick: all the kungfu masters wear horrible, obvious wigs! I was waiting for the hair to fly off during one of the many excellent fight choreographies, but it just didn't happen. That stuff is glued down really tight....

I was very disappointed with the quality of the DVD, I love Dragon Fist saw in the theatre many moons ago and this very poor copy transfered to DVD is terrible. I couldn't even get through the second fight scene, it had tracking lines visible,the OCean SHores logo coming up every ten minutes. I had the video of this movie and could have done a better job with a copy because I actually took care of my videos. I would not recommend this terrible copy, especially for those who love the young Jackie Chan. That said, it's an very good movie, good fight scenes and actually a very good story line, don't expect to see comic releif this a drama compared to some of other Jackie's movies.

Although this Beverly Wilshire DVD of "Dragon Fist" is uncut, it his HORBBILE! It has bad dubbing, and horrible video quality. It looks like it came straight from a banged-up VHS tape.

Not only that, but Beverly-Wilshire claims that this version is "widescreen," but what they didn't tell you is that they took a full-screen version of "Dragon Fist" and then cut off the tops and bottoms of the screen to make it look like it's a "widescreen" picture.

Here is what I would do. Buy the Columbia/Tristar version. Their version is cut by about 20 minutes from it's original version, but at least it has the original language and the movie in it's original 2:35:1 aspect ratio. That way, you can see the whole fight scenes without anything cut off on the sides of the screen. Then, to get the whole story, buy the Simitar version. Their version is full screen but also UNCUT, and it has good picture quality (even though it has no subtitles and you have to watch it in English). But stay away from this Beverly Wilshire DVD at all costs!

First of all, it is the last serious Jackie Chan movie, without any comedical element, and one of the best of this early period. A serious kung-fu movie which is worth to see.

But this Beverly Wilshire/Telefilms edition is not above critism. It has only one big advantage: it contains the ~90 minutes long version. Otherwise it's aspect ratio is only 4:3, which is far, far away from the original 2,35:1. The colour balance is okay, but the picture quality is not even up to the VHS standards. It's clearly worse.

So if I was you, I would buy the Columbia/Tristar Edition instead. I've never seen that, but I assume (knowing three other Jackie Chan DVDs from Columbia) that is really widescreen, and has much better quality, though contains only the ~75 minutes long version, with a little strange storyline. (People starts fighting without letting you know why. Thanks for cutting out the explanation...)

One last thing: NEVER buy Jackie Chan DVDs from Eastern Heroes Ltd. (They're available through the UK Amazon.) They advertise their Jackie Chan movies as 16:9 widescreen editions. But they just ZOOMED ON the 4:3 version, so they made a discgraceful butchery. Unbeleiveable. They've done it with Fearless Hyena, Snake & Crane Arts of Shaolin, Dragon Fist, To Kill With Intrigue. I have all of this DVDs, so I know what I am saying. I only know one expection: New Fist of Fury, which is letterboxed widescreen, but otherwise, it's a terrible movie.

This story is basically a good drama, with action/kung fu scenes supporting the story, which is unusual for a Lo Wei directed Jackie picture and for the Hong Kong 70s kung fu genre as a whole!! Jackie gives a good dramatic performance, though as it is basically his first, is not terrific. Please note the 3 stars are for Jackie and the story, not for the DVD itself. 20 or so minutes (which explains why a lot of the action happens) have been cut from this version. This is typical of US distributed Jackie movies I have found. Check out Amazon.co.uk for recently produced DVDs (including this one) which are not cut. They are PAL format though. If you are a rabid Chan-fan, and like to see Jackie stretching himself a little beyond the typical action/comedy/stunt scenario then this movie is a must see and won't disappoint, even in its reduced format.

For those people looking for the most complete version of 'Dragon Fist', this is the one to buy. It's not only widescreen, but also 90 minutes long! This has been an issue for collectors of this film because the only prints that seem to be available are the cut 75 minute versions. The missing section includes the abduction and death of a child, but you don't see the child get killed, so I'm not sure why it was removed. The quality of the film is okay. Not crisp and clean, but the colors are alright. The source was probably an old VHS tape. That's why I'm giving it only 4 out of 5. But if your a completist, then this is the version of the film you'll want to get!

By the way, I'm referring to the Beverly Wilshire DVD in case this review gets attached to another DVD release.

This one really sucked, though the storyline isn't the worst, but the action just sucks. It starts out really good and we are treated to a tournament with 1 guy whoopin on everyone, but he dies and it just gets worse and worse. A lot of really crappy fights and then the end. The last fight might be good, but I don't even remeber this sucked so much. Like I said, decent story, but no execution whatsoever.