Dragon Squad 2005
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Movie Reviews of Dragon Squad 2005
Movie Review: (3.5 STARS) Violent Hong-Kong Action Flick with Interesting Cast
Summary: 4 Stars
Young Interpol agents collected from several Asian countries fight the bloody battle against the gangsters over the kidnapped criminals. The premise of `Maang lung' (`Dragon Squad') is not a very complicated one, and for all intense and violent actions, you can't say director Daniel Lee (Jet Li's `Black Mask') did any groundbreaking achievement in it. Still `Dragon Squad' is pretty watchable actioner with interesting cast gathering for this film.
As I said, the premise is simple. After a botched mission, five young cops (played by Vanness Wu, Shawn Yue, Shengyi Huang, Lawrence Chou, and Yu Xia respectively) stand up and fight the international crime syndicate led by a gangster Ko (Jun-ho Heo). Sammo Hung plays a veteran cop who works with younger police agents while Michael Biehn (yes, the guy who fought Governor of California in `The Terminator') appears as a hired mercenary fighting for Ko. The film's sub-plots include a romance, a family-ties, and so on, but the film's strength lies in the fierce action sequences that come with lots of bullets and bucketfuls of blood.
In addition to the cast members above, some faces familiar in Hollywood films like Simon Yam (`Tomb Raider 2") and Maggie Q ("Mission Impossible III") also appear. It must be said they are typecast (Simon Yam as the police commander, Maggie Q as the deadly sniper), but they did fine performance as well as the main cast. A bit more surprising is Bingbing Li, who was seen in Chinese film `Purple Butterfly' as a girl quietly reading a book in a tram. She plays a different kind of role here, and is still effective at that.
The film features a couple of big and loud group battles between the cops and the criminal, and during the scenes they use such weapons as guns, grenades, and rifles with a scope. These action scenes are, it is reported, very costly, and `Dragon Squad' will not disappoint you if you're looking for the bullets flying like a rain. it deserves the name of a big-budget film (for Hong-Kong film, of course), but the actions are mostly gripping.
Still, the film suffers from its a bit silly plot holes: some cops, it is told, traveled to Hong Kong to deliver the testimony and evidences at the beginning of the film. So why don't they just go back to their country after doing that? Justice or friendship is not a strong reason enough. The sub-plots are not particularly interesting, and the suggested love story of Michael Biehn's character looks weak, and fails to convince. Clearly the film's script tries to be character-driven, but its intentions are often overshadowed by too much violence in the action scenes. This is not to say all the characters are flat. The villains are pretty successful in showing the pathos at the end of the film, but if you're looking for the intensity of `Heat' in which Al Pacino confronts DeNiro, you should watch something else.
`Dragon Squad' is an average action flick with big, flashy, and extremely violent actions with frantic camera work. And it is co-produced by Steven Seagal (but why??)