Review | Invincible Dragon film review: Fruit Chan’s outlandish crime thriller starring Max Zhang, Anderson Silva
- A darkly comic police thriller wrapped around a serial killer mystery, punctuated by a cheeky voice-over that adds a touch of the fairy tale, this mashes genres
- Story of an eccentric detective with a violent streak soon goes off the rails as ever more preposterous fight scenes follow in quick succession
2/5 stars
Preposterous doesn’t begin to describe Fruit Chan Gor’s Invincible Dragon, the big-budget crime thriller that had been hyped for its fight scenes between rising action star Max Zhang Jin ( Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy ) and Brazilian mixed martial artist Anderson Silva before anyone even knew much about its synopsis.
Filming was completed more than two years ago, but by coincidence the film is being released just three months after Chan’s no-budget allegorical sex comedy Three Husbands opened in Hong Kong cinemas to much controversy. Astonishingly, this glossy commercial film by the unorthodox Chan is the more fantastical of the two.
Co-produced and directed by Chan from a story he co-wrote with regular screenwriting partner Jason Lam Kee-to, Invincible Dragon is a bizarre mix of genres. It is a darkly comic police thriller wrapped around a serial killer mystery, punctuated by a cheeky voice-over narration that adds a touch of the fairy tale to the gritty proceedings.
Zhang plays Kowloon, an eccentric police inspector renowned for his dragon tattoos and, legend has it, his childhood encounter with a nine-headed dragon. A marvellous detective whose career is blighted by his impulsively violent behaviour towards criminals – Lam Suet plays one of his victims in a witty opening scene – Kowloon is soon demoted and sent to work in a remote police station.
When a series of murders of Hong Kong policewomen occurs in Hong Kong’s New Territories, Kowloon is invited back to crack the case – only to lose track of his colleague and fiancée Fong Ning (Stephy Tang Lai-yan) in mysterious circumstances during a botched attempt to trap the suspected killer.