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source: Dragon Eyes

Moviecut—Dragon Eyes

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.

This pugnacious criminal melodrama about a taciturn Asian who smashes a drug running operation qualifies as standard-issue stuff from start to finish. Nevertheless, "Universal Soldier: Regeneration" director John Hyams doesn't let the low budget undercut his gripping but formulaic thriller. Basically, "Dragon Eyes" is a modern day town-taming western. An enigmatic loner, Mr. Hong, is dispatched to the small town of St. Jude as a favor to a cell mate that served as his mentor. St. Jude is seething with anarchy. Pushers are selling drugs on the street, and the authorities are crooky. Although the setting and the characters are different, Hyams and scenarist Tim Tori have appropriated the Dashiell Hammett's novel "Red Harvest" as the template for this brawny slugfest as our reticent protagonist (former MMA champion Cung Le of "Pandorum") infiltrates the local gangs and manages to turn them against each other. The main villain cuts a flamboyant figure in a fedora named Mr. V (Peter Weller of "Robocop"), and he delivers a first-rate performance as a murderous crime lord who has no qualms about killing in cold blood. Martial arts legend Jean Claude Van Damme appears in our hero's flashbacks and serves as our hero's mentor. Hyams never lets the action slacken, and he stagess several effective, knuckle-smashing fights. Of course, the action supersedes plot, and the characters are strictly one-dimensional. "Dragon Eyes" contains some earthy dialogue, consistently cynical attitudes, and free-flowing violence that generates a body count. The amazing thing about "Dragon Eyes" is that Hyams keeps everything down-to-earth and believable. The action occurs in rooms, around apartments, but never ventures out into sprawling cityscapes. This is a no-nonsense brawling that doesn't wear out its welcome at 92 crisp minutes.

This movie is bad. The plot revolves around drug dealers controlled by a corrupt police officer. They have a Latino gang, a black gang , and a Russian gang. These gangs are filled with stereotypical types who don't seem menacing at all. Most of them are rather funny and try too hard to be gangsters wearing tracksuits. The whole movie feels cheap and shot by amateurs. While it stars veteran actors like Van Damme and Weller (who by the way are 2 of my favourite action stars) The whole thing has a very poor story. Half the time the story makes no sense. There's this one scene where our hero Mr Hong (Cung Lee) is with a love interest in this apartment exchanging some lovely words between them. Suddenly a bad guy walks in and stars shooting up the place with a pistol with a silencer on it??? However he announces his presence and they have a fight. The bad guy is thrown all over the place after getting a couple of hits in, but is defeated. Then the movie cuts to Mr Hong then standing with this guy giving orders to the bad guys gang? WHAT???? Did this guy just give him control over his gang because he bashed him in this apartment? Not only that, Mr HONG is suddenly in a league with Mr V (Weller) and is now running guns and drugs with no explanation. For the rest of the movie the gangs trash talk to each other and it is assumed but not shown that Mr Hong sets the gangs up against each other, by leaving notes in their safes (written in Chinese)???? Van Damme plays a prisoner who teaches Mr HONG how to do better kicks in flashbacks while they were both in jail simply because he reminds him of his dead son, who he accidentally shot when he was a thug by the way, hence his time in jail (are we confused yet?) the only decent thing from this film comes from some fights which seem good but ruined by the flashes and overuse of slow mo shots. But the whole movie seems like it was shot in one building and one street. Cung Lee is a MMA fighter in real life, he just cannot act, I'm sorry but it's true. I've seen him in action in the ring and while he does have some great skills which he shows off in this movie, he let himself down by being out of shape, the love handles are not disguised by having him shot standing in the shadows folks. Either get back in shape or don't take your shirt off. Peter WELLER does a great job as the main bad guy. His random acting actually prevented me from falling asleep. The former Robocop star did well, but I can't believe he associated his name with this film. Maybe he did it as a favour, who knows. Even for a budget DVD film, this is pretty bad. Watch this if you want to fall asleep or laugh at the poor script. Poor.

This review is for those that are not hard-core Martial-Arts Movie fans. They have another perspective, more closely associated with the popular genre. It is for those that drop in occasionally to see what all the fuss is about or to check out the "new kid on the block". In this one it is a real life fighter of some sort or another and has made his way to the screen via his physical abilities and was the best at what he does. Cung Le makes Jet Li look like a great talent in the acting department. But as these things go, no one much cares. The film looks, again, like a sepia-tone, washed out, colorless, "style" that is supposed to say this is hard-boiled stuff, nothing pretty here, only dudes allowed. All it really does is look pretentious and lifeless. The fight scenes are very good and are shot with a focus and not quickly edited so you can actually see what's going on and there are a lot of them and are quite convincing and brutal. The plot is confusing and way over written. Van Damme is a secondary mentor type, but Peter Weller makes an impression as a cartoon cop. Worth a view for fans but there is really nothing here for outsiders slumming it.