Heavy Action: KISS OF THE DRAGON

 by Patrick Bromley

Tchéky Karyo, an actor who gave good villain, has left us. This one is for him.

I have been meaning to write a Heavy Action column on the 2001 martial arts actioner Kiss of the Dragon -- a movie I think only myself and Adam Riske love -- for several years now and never got around to it. Too busy writing about Oogieloves and the Godzilla remake I guess. Now French actor Tchéky Karyo, who memorably plays Kiss of the Dragon's bad guy (and memorably played antagonists in other movies including Bad Boys and the unhinged 1997 romantic comedy Addicted to Love) has passed on from cancer at age 72 and the time has come for me to pay my respects to this underappreciated gem of early 2000s action. This is my favorite of the American Jet Li films even though it's basically French. This is among the best of the Luc Besson-produced content that was getting churned out at the time. This is the movie that may have driven Bridget Fonda out of acting for good. I'm not happy about that last one.

Jet stars as Liu, a Chinese cop who travels to Paris to arrest a heroin-smuggling mob boss called only "Mr. Big." (Did I mention this was a Luc Besson production?) While doing surveillance on Big's meeting with two sex workers -- one of them an American and former addict who wants no part of this (played by Fonda) -- Big is assassinated and Liu is framed for the murder. Now, he must team with Fonda to clear his name and bring down the corrupt cop (Karyo) who put all of this bullshit in motion.

You couldn't throw a ticket stub in the late '90s or early 2000s without hitting a movie that Luc Besson had touched. Yes, he is a garbage person who has married teenagers and been accused of everything from inappropriate behavior to sexual assault. No, I'm not a fan. At the same time, his impact on action cinema should not be understated, with over 50 films to his credit as either director, producer, screenwriter, or some combination of the three. He more or less pioneered the French Action movement of this period, which Mark Ahn has very wisely likened to the Italian spaghetti westerns of the 1960s: movies that try to approximate a uniquely American genre but lose (and gain) something in the translation. He's best known for interchangeable action trash and expensive science fiction weirdness. I prefer his contributions in the former mode -- movies like Taken and The Transporter and Kiss of the Dragon, a movie that feels less like one of his productions except that it's slightly generic and set in France. 

I'm not sure I can properly explain why Kiss of the Dragon is my favorite of the Jet Li Hollywood efforts. Maybe it's because it's more grounded than something like The One or Unleashed, or maybe it's because it's darker and rougher than Romeo Must Die or Cradle 2 The Grave. The action is better, too: director Chris Nahon and Li (who also acted as a producer on the film) wanted more realistic fight scenes and said that Kiss of the Dragon should eschew the CG-enhanced wire work that had become so prevalent in the post-Crouching Tiger landscape of action. There's a street-level quality to the fighting here not found in a lot of Li's films (the ones I've seen, of course; I don't claim to be an expert), particularly because so many of his Chinese efforts were period pieces. And while Kiss of the Dragon doesn't do much with his onscreen persona the way something like Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog) got a lot of mileage out of his quiet calm and his general adorableness -- he doesn't really have a character to play here besides "cop" -- Li is more than functional in a role that's just sympathetic enough to justify all the ass-kickings he doles out. He's been wronged, sure, but he's also fighting on behalf of Bridget Fonda and her daughter. We want this guy to fuck everyone up and he does.

About Bridget Fonda. I know it had become somewhat customary to cast overqualified women as the second or third lead in action movies around this time, whether it was Mira Sorvino in The Replacement Killers or Sharon Stone in The Specialist or Aaliyah in the aforementioned Romeo Must Die, but the role she is given in Kiss of the Dragon is not worthy of a Bridget Fonda. The actor has been a favorite of mine going back to the late '80s when she stole Shag: The Movie, but it was really the '90s that she basically ran for me thanks to movies like Single White Female, Jackie Brown, Singles, or It Could Happen to You. She's even capable of doing action, starring in 1993's underrated Point of No Return -- another Luc Besson connection in that it's a remake of his La Femme Nikita.

While her late-'90s and early 2000s at the box office weren't great -- movies like A Simple Plan and Lake Placid rule but didn't bring in crazy amounts of money (also there is Monkeybone) -- the movies she made during that period at least knew how to make use of what she brought to the table (except maybe Monkeybone). It's hard to talk about Kiss of the Dragon without mentioning that this is basically her last Hollywood movie (and her second-to-last acting credit period). Whether shitty parts like "drug-addicted sex worker in a Jet Li vehicle" drove her out of the business or if she retired after meeting and marrying Danny Elfman to raise a family I cannot say for sure. All I know is that she deserved much better than what she's given here despite being an actor I love who is good in a movie I like. 

Finally, we must discuss Tchéky Karyo, the villain of the piece whose recent passing inspired this revisit in the first place. He worked for Besson twice as director (in both La Femme Nikita and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc) and again for Besson the producer in Kiss of the Dragon. He's playing a pretty generic Eurotrash bad guy here, the difference being that he's a corrupt cop and not just a random gangster as he had been in Bad Boys, but Karyo brings something extra to the role that wouldn't have been present if it had been cast with another actor. He's great at boiling rage, like if Gary Oldman's "EVERYONNNNE" in The Professional (to reference Besson again) were sustained to feature length. It's a failure of the screenplay by Besson and regular collaborator Robert Mark Kamen (with a story by Jet Li) that he's never believable as a cop who wouldn't be corrupt so that when he turns on Li it functions as a twist or reveal, but I can't lay that at Karyo's feet. He doesn't just understand the assignment here; he elevates it. He will be missed.

Kiss of the Dragon is the kind of action movie that's mostly lost to time -- a Luc Besson joint that's not beloved enough to stand out (The Fifth Element) nor disastrous enough to be remembered as a colossal misfire (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets). It did just ok in Summer 2001, earning $65 million globally on a budget of $25 million. It's the kind of Fox movie that shows up in the montage during that Fox DVD intro and reminds you that it exists for the first time in years (actually, a case could be made that this movie is the closest anything has ever come to being a feature-length Fox DVD intro). It's trashy but awesome, has some misplaced heart, some really cool action, and a great villain death worthy of a really enjoyable villain. RIP Tchéky. I would never want to go out via Kiss of the Dragon, but you really sold that shit.