A gangster and a cop work together to make big money, but how long will they be in paradise?
Chasing the Dragon is partly based on true events. In the lead roles, we find Andy Lau and Donnie Yen. When it comes to Donnie Yen we get to see a few fights, but he never takes off completely. So if you think this is a typical Donnie Yen movie with a lot of martial arts and poses, then you will be disappointed.
Donnie Yen plays a gangster, and Andy Lau plays a corrupt cop. Both love money, and they like each other. So they cooperate, and little by little, the character that Donnie Yen plays becomes a powerful drug lord in Hong Kong. But being on top is not easy, because everyone is looking to kill the great white shark.
Unfortunately, this was not an engaging journey. Most characters are unsympathetic. They only think of themselves and theirs, and it gets boring in the long run when you have no sympathetic characters that you like and can root for.
It also doesn’t help that the characters around Donnie Yen have no hint of character depth. None of these so-called central characters around Donnie Yen have any personality. And when some of them die, you normally should feel sorry for the protagonist and his loss. But the only thing I felt was that it was white, blank sheets that died and not humans.
I have seen and experienced this in many Hong Kong movies that the gangster movies are in a hurry. The script is rather dull, which makes the story and progress of the central characters move forward too quickly. You don’t feel that Donnie Yen’s character has to struggle so much to reach the top if you compare the movie to gangster movies from, for example, South Korea. But when one of the directors is called Jing Wong, then you can’t expect anything else. He’s a lazy man!
And we also have the usual white devils in the movie. Again and again, we witness this in Chinese movies, and they never quit with this boring nonsense! Try at least to write white characters in a better and grown-up way! You behave like some grumpy kids when you constantly transform white people into evil devils with no personality. I’m so tired of this crap. Grow up! And yes, I know my history and I understand why they are portraying white people as the bad guys. But the world has moved forward, and so should the Chinese!
Chasing the Dragon is a mediocre movie that should have had other people behind the camera. There is an interesting story here, but it never comes out as the script is half empty and the characters are empty and mostly uninteresting.
