Dragon Blade (2015) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Drama

Set in China during the Han dynasty (206-220 AD), Dragon Blade follows Huo An, an official framed and enslaved for a crime he didn't commit. Soon thereafter, however, he meets a legion of defected Roman soldiers led by General Lucius and the pair begin to form an unlikely alliance.

Storyline: A massive success this year in its native China, "Dragon Blade" brings action spectacle on a grand scale to US audiences. Featuring an international cast led by Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Academy Award® winner Adrien Brody, the film features the fight for the Silk Road when East and West collide. When corrupt Roman leader Tiberius (Adrien Brody) arrives with a giant army to claim the Silk Road, Huo An (Jackie Chan) and his group of trained warriors teams up with an elite legion of defected Roman soldiers led by General Lucius (John Cusack) to maintain the delicate balance of power in the region. To protect his country and his new friends, Huo An gathers the warriors of thirty-six ethnic nations together to fight Tiberius in an incredible epic battle. The film is written and directed by Daniel Lee ("Black Mask") and produced by Jackie Chan and Susanna Tsang. Written by Lionsgate

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 18, 2015 -- Spartacus may be one of the all time uncontested classics of cinema, but for certain curmudgeons (ahem) Tony Curtis just never seemed to quite fit in to the film's pre-Christian ambience, what with his late 50s pompadour and (especially) his Brooklyn tinged patois. Some may feel similarly ill disposed toward John Cusack in Dragon Blade, for there's something undeniably contemporary about the actor, even as he's weighted down under what looks like pounds of Roman costuming regalia. And in fact there's a decidedly modern ambience to Cusack's co-stars in Dragon Blade, Jackie Chan and Adrien Brody, both of whom are asked to spout 21st century dialogue in what is supposedly a 50 BC time setting. Dragon Blade touts the fact that it's based on actual historical facts, but the film comes off as rather far fetched, with a tendency to devolve into silly one liners that recall jokey Chan efforts of yesteryear rather than any actual yesteryear. The film is impressively mounted, even if its over reliance on CGI casts much of the imagery in a rather soft look, but it feels like huge swaths of material were left on the cutting room floor, leading to a lurching quality in the narrative that the film is never able to completely overcome.

Captain Huo An (Jackie Chan) is a Chinese soldier who works as part of the so-called Silk Road Protection Squad, a kind of mercenary army that is attempting to keep the peace on an important trade route where both internecine and intramural conflicts break out with great regularity. The film starts out with one of these very skirmishes, as huge hordes of competing armies line up for battle, only to be urged not to actually fight by An. An is of course challenged to a duel by a rather unlikely combatant—an obviously gorgeous woman in a veil. During the hand to hand battle, An inadvertently tears the veil from the woman's face in what is evidently a "game changing" moment, though in the first of several inadequately detailed plot points, it's never explained why. The next scene, which sees An attempting to return the veil to the woman, who removes all of her clothes and tells An she's "ready" for him, is similarly removed from any context and helps to start the film out on a somewhat head scratching note.

Another kind of weirdly undeveloped scene involves An and his wife (though the relationship is never really spelled out), a woman who, with her husband, is hoping to bring an end to countless years of conflict between various tribes. While An is out on the Silk Road trying to tamp down any simmering disputes, his wife works as a teacher where a gaggle of incredibly cute children are taught to sing a song in Mandarin, evidently a gambit which will ensure their peacefulness (in yet another unexplained phenomenon). In the first of several scenes where a portentous messenger simply shows up to deliver bad news, one of An's acolytes arrives to say that the entire Protection Squad has been cast under suspicion by the discovery of some stolen booty which the Squad has been accused of helping to sequester. That in turn sends An and his crew to a kind of Chinese "Siberia", a work camp known as Goose Gate, a huge fortress like enclosure that is need of some serious "urban development," a need which supposed prisoners like An and his men are tasked with completing.

It's at this already confusing point that a Roman legion simply appears out of nowhere (though a text crawl has given lip service to a kind of magically disappearing regiment that supposedly still wanders the Silk Road). This aggregation is headed by Lucius (John Cusack), who is evidently trying to help a little boy named Publius (Jozef Waite). Unsurprisingly, it turns out the little tyke is a royal and is on the run from his scheming (much) older brother Tiberius (Adrien Brody). While Lucius and An have to have an obligatory hand to hand (or sword to sword) battle at their first meeting, also unsurprisingly the end up as allies, both to help complete An's task to get Goose Gate's repairs handled in an expeditious manner, but perhaps more importantly to try to defeat Tiberius, whose incursion into the Silk Road territory will spell disaster for any peace efforts.

A lot of these plot mechanics seem to arise willy nilly, with very little if any context and (again) a feeling that something is missing at various points along the way. And in fact, there's no doubt that there's some strangely absent material in this Blu-ray release, as evidenced by some online material (including our own Brian Orndorf's review that appeared during the film's theatrical exhibition) which references a 21st century bookending conceit which is nowhere to be found here. Also, both Brian's review and some other online sources state that the film is set in 48 B.C., while the text crawl at the beginning of this version clearly says 50 B.C. This is obviously a very minor difference, but one which indicates someone may have continued tinkering with the film after its theatrical exhibition. What might have helped more than removing a framing device or altering the timeframe by a couple of years would have been more attention paid to detailing the actual coalition between the Romans and the Chinese.

Dragon Blade has an admirable thesis in its depiction of two potential warrior classes working together to overcome a common enemy, but the film seems to have been almost clumsily edited at times, leaving gaping holes in the narrative arc, and some confusion in the wake as a result. Chan is refreshingly restrained here, as frankly is Cusack, but Brody simply glowers his way through his role without ever creating a believable character. The film is often a eyeful, and the action sequences are superbly staged. Technical merits are first rate for those considering a purchase.

[CSW] -1.6- A family friendly big costume movie that is thin on plot and thinner on dialog. The action and adventure is interesting only for kids, but adults will soon get bored as it isn't a true martial arts film nor is it a historical drama with a decent plot. It's not a boring movie, but it is a bad. Some of the martial art scenes are decent but it doesn't make up for the rest of the baggage the movie drags along. Not sure where the R rating came from because it would have been a PG movie without the blood. This movie seems to be very contrived and the purpose for doing it that way is beyond me.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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