The Dragon Chronicles (1994) / Action-Fantasy

MPAA Rated: Not rated
Running Time: 96 min.

Cast: Brigitte Lin, Li Gong, Tsui Sui Keung, Man Cheung
Director:  Wing Keung Chien
Screenplay: Louis Cha
Review published May 18, 1999

If you want a sure headache, you'll try to explain the plot line to this unintelligible mess of a movie. Astonishingly, probably 90% of viewers attempting to watch this will likely be lost just from the 2 minute intro explaining what is going on! The nearest I could come up with is that there is some old sorcerer who puts out a rumor of his demise in order to find and defeat the one chosen to replace him. A bunch of different factions come out of the woodworks to fight for some sort of kung fu Melting Stance.

Of course, I'm probably way off, but I practically gave up about halfway through the movie because people kept switching identities and appearances so much, to follow what was going on would have required Cliff Notes with identity charts (and still there would have been no guarantee).

The look of it is very good, though the tongue-in-cheek humor is tedious most of the time. Lots of really good special effects, competent fight scenes, and attractive actresses manage to maintain a minimal interest, but that sure isn't enough to make it good. Too much plot mixed with too little dialogue adds up to little more than a pretty looking 90 minutes of nonsense. Such a waste of decent actors.

Qwipster's rating:

©1999 Vince Leo