Kiss of the Dragon

Thanks to most of my students' inability to keep to deadlines, I only had a few papers to read today, but they still took up most of the day. By the time I finished the last one, I felt I needed a treat, so I put on the DVD of Kiss of the Dragon I'd saved up for just this kind of occasion.

Luc Besson is a typical French director: wonderful on camera work, dialogue and character, but no idea of plot (thanks to rodneyorpheus for first alerting me to this). Jet Li is one of the best martial arts actors around these days. He has technique oozing out of his eyeballs (a look at the "behind the scenes" clip showed how little SFX he needs) and although he's no Chow Yun Fat, his acting is passable - he manages to combine that Bruce Lee "I'm seriously pissed off now" mood with Jackie Chan's naive humour. He also wrote the story, which makes up for Besson's normal inattention to plot. Putting the two of them together gives a wonderful over-the-top flic film, half way between Diva and Romeo Must Die.

Then there's the fight with the Twins, a lovely (and perhaps a tad jealous) reworking of that scene in The Matrix Reloaded.

By the way, did Luc Besson have some bad experience with the police? Every film of his I've seen portrays the police as evil, stupid or both.