The inexplicable 'Dragon from Russia'

 

What the fuck is happening? Who the hell is this guy? What happened to that other guy? Is that the same chick from before? Wait, what was all that about? I don’t understand any of this.

Those were just a few of the thoughts passing through my mind as I watched Dragon from Russia, a Chinese action flick that is so damn confusing I almost couldn’t handle it. It’s a rash mess of abrupt editing, rapid action and obtuseness that is difficult to follow. It’s often almost impossible to comprehend, moving at a breakneck pace without regard to sense or reason. Inexplicable is a good way to describe it.

So there’s this group of assassins called the 800 Dragons. Their leader, the deformed Dragon Master, is pissed off because one of his disciples, Kishudo, has gone rouge and has been training his own group of assassins. He’s also run off with a book that lists the identities of all the 800 Dragons and their various abilities.

The Dragon Master comes up with a weird plan – he kidnaps and brainwashes a street performer named Yao to become his new protégé with the express purpose of hunting down Kishudo and killing him. The plan works pretty well as Yao – his memory forgotten (through acupuncture) – is super-loyal and pretty good at murdering dudes. There’s only one rule he has to follow – if anybody sees him during an assassination, he has to kill them.

Predictably, he gets seen by his former girlfriend May, who has spent years trying to find him after his kidnapping. When Yao goes to kill her, she sparks his memory and he becomes determined to protect her and regain his old life back. But the 800 Dragons find out and become determined to kill May and get Yao back. Also there’s this weird thing going on with the Yakuza that might be important, maybe?

Due to the rapid editing and the constant rush the movie seems to be in, events come and go forgotten and ignored with minimal impact. Rival assassin Kishudo barely figures into the plot after the opening, a fair few characters just outright disappear and are never mentioned again, and the Dragon Master goes missing for a massive chunk of the film. The editing is the biggest problem. It makes massive, sudden cuts all the time with no explanation. Sometimes freaking years or months pass in an instant with no warning. Edits are rapid, constant and sudden, often abruptly switching from scene to scene with no context or explanation in between. For example, one character is shot twice and is seemingly dead, but then the next scene they’re perfectly healthy and fine as though nothing happened.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of, many of whom look very similar to each other. There’s a whole bunch of them that wear masks or hide their faces so it’s impossible to tell who is who. Most characters (particularly the women) constantly change clothes and hairstyles, so they look completely different between scenes. There is one character in particular who I am completely confused as to who they were meant to be. There also seems to be a whole bunch of side plots going on involving minor characters that have nothing to do with anything. There’s some nonsense romance between a Yakuza lady and her subordinate (who might be a police detective?) that’s completely out of place with everything else and doesn’t go anywhere. They even have a totally serious sex scene despite neither character being important or featuring into the main plot at all.

The tone is so freaking inconsistent it’s astounding, flitting uselessly from serious, to goofy, to overly dramatic, to sickly saccharine – you can never get a proper handle on anything. It starts out ridiculous, pulls back to somewhat serious, then flits between goofy to dramatic to retarded at will. Every scene with May is played seriously, while the Dragon Master comes across as goofy (despite being the main villain), and that weird business involving the Yakuza feels like it’s from a different movie entirely.

It’s a profoundly stupid movie with ridiculous inconsistencies. Brainwashed Yao is meant to kill anybody who sees him on assassinations, but he constantly gets seen by dozens of people. All his assassinations (shown in a montage) are in public, in broad daylight, with dozens of spectators. Why he only goes after May is nothing more than story-telling coincidence. Another inconsistency is the locations; characters seem able to travel from central Russia to the 800 Dragon’s forest lair in China within an hour or so.

Now the abrupt and confusing nature of the film could be excused if the action was great. It isn’t. It’s actually pretty standard stuff as far as this sort of movie goes, but it’s given odd, and sometimes lazy, attention. Most scenes have characters either throwing daggers and knives or flipping through the air constantly - sometimes they're doing both at the same time. Most action scenes are sped up which, coupled with the rapid editing, makes it seem like the movie is being fast forwarded. You can visibly see the wires used when characters flip through the air, and stuntmen have obviously different physiques and hair than their originals.

Sometimes the action is somewhat realistic and consistent, but then in most scenes assassin characters are flying through the air, catching daggers with their ponytails. A ridiculous car chase scene has bullets flying everywhere and more explosions than one would think necessary. The weird inconsistencies are here as well – some scenes have characters throwing ninja stars and daggers, but you never see where they go or what they were being thrown at.

The editing issues are here in full force. Sometimes it will suddenly cut to another take of the same action or stunt. So if Yao flips over a table to kick somebody, it’ll instantly show another, different take of him flipping over the same table and kicking the same person. It’s almost as though they couldn’t choose which version they wanted to use so they used both. Whether it was a stylistic choice or not is beyond me, but the effect is baffling and often confusing.

In the end Dragon from Russia exists as an odd sort of exercise in absurdity, showcasing the dangers of poor editing. Things happen so suddenly it’s ridiculous, the entire movie acting as a sort of rollercoaster that doesn't care if you fall off at some point. There are many better movies of this sort out there, and the vast majority make fare more sense than this does.