Borrowing the title, if little else, from a 1987 Sammo Hung comedy, Enter the Fat Dragon coasts on the charm and skill of action star Donnie Yen. He plays Fallon Zhu, a Hong Kong cop on the outs after a botched bank robbery turns into an expensively destructive chase.
Demoted to guarding the evidence room and dumped by his fiancée Chloe (Niki Chow), a “second tier” TV star, Zhu compensates by overeating. Six months later the now-rotund Zhu is given the opportunity to redeem himself by escorting one of the witnesses to the bank robbery back to Japan.
During the flight he runs into Chloe, hired by Shimakura (Hiro Hayama) to entertain a business meeting. Neither realize yet that Shimakura is a triad gangster determined to kill Zhu’s witness.
In Tokyo Zhu is met by Endo (Naoto Takenaka), an inspector with an absurdly bad toupee, and bubble-headed interpretor Maggie (Jessica Jann). One rest stop later, Zhu loses his witness, whose corpse surfaces in Tokyo Bay.
Zhu’s Hong Kong partner Shing (Louis Cheung) hooks him up with a Tokyo street vendor and former cop Thor, played by producer and co-writer Wong Jing. Thor looks out for Charisma (Theresa Mo), whose restaurant has been targeted by Shimakura’s gang.
That’s a lot of plot for an action comedy, but it unfolds as smoothly (and broadly) as a Wong Jing flick from a generation ago. Loud, sloppy, offensive, and politically tone-deaf, Enter the Fat Dragon finds no joke too low, no insult too mean, no caricature too blunt. Which actually puts it on a par with the Detective Chinatown series.
Stuntman Kenji Tanikagi is the credited director, but Wong Jing’s fingerprints are all over Enter the Fat Dragon. Wong Jing’s seen a lot in his career, from God of Gamblers and Stephen Chow comedies to some truly awful films like the Naked Killer series. His releases can be lazy and slapdash, but few directors have been able to connect as deeply with an audience for some thirty years and over a hundred titles.
Enter the Fat Dragon was supposed to be a Lunar New Year release, but it’s gone straight to streaming in Asia thanks to coronavirus fears and some potential political hostility from Hong Kongers who feel that Wong and Donnie Yen are too pro-China. The movie does make some broad political points (cops are corrupt, authority in general not to be trusted) which is gets away with by calling out the Japanese.
But really, how serious can you take a film that doesn’t bother to keep track of its own plot? There’s an undernourished Bruce Lee connection, a kid martial artist who gets a couple of moves before he’s dropped, a triad story line that goes nowhere, Shing’s mistreatment of Zhu, Maggie suddenly flying a helicopter, and too many crooked cops to keep track of before a big blowout on the Tokyo Tower that is supposed to take care of all the loose ends.
It’s probably a wash to US viewers, who will have enough trouble putting up with screeching dialogue and toilet jokes. But there’s always been a candor and openness to Wong Jing’s work, even at its crassest—a sense of unity and uplift that’s surprisingly appealing.
As for Donnie Yen, he’s extremely enjoyable in an about-face from his last film appearance at Ip Man. He’s done comedy before (notably All’s Well Ends Well 2012) and is perfectly at ease sending up himself and his earlier movies like SPL. (The prosthetics required to give him weight also de-age him as effectively as the computer programs used in The Irishman.)
Finally, the action scenes here are fantastic. Yes, you can detect wirework, digital effects, doubles, undercranking and all the other expected tricks, but the sequences are choreographed, shot and edited with exceptional skill. The car chases beat anything out of Hollywood in months, and leaping, sliding, kicking, punching, Yen is a joy to watch. He and the stunt teams make Enter the Fat Dragon more than worthwhile—they make it fun.
Well Go USA Entertainment is releasing Enter the Dragon on February 14 across the US and Canada.
