Review | Enter the Fat Dragon film review: delightful Donnie Yen action comedy gets actor’s post-Ip Man career off to a bright start

Film takes the premise of 1978 Sammo Hung title of the same name – an overweight Bruce Lee fan – and refashions it with hilarious results

Comedic action is mixed with scenes of two couples bickering, but the film is also peppered with unintended references to recent events in Hong Kong

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From left: Donnie Yen, Jessica Jann and Naoto Takenaka in a still from Enter the Fat Dragon (category IIB; Cantonese, Japanese, English), directed by Kenji Tanigaki. Niki Chow and Wong Jing co-star.

Published: 7:00pm, 22 Jan 2020Updated: 9:00pm, 22 Jan 2020

3.5/5 stars

Having dispensed with the safety net that was his Ip Man film series following its fourth and final instalment, launched last month, Hong Kong martial arts superstar Donnie Yen Ji-dan appears already to have found a new lease of life with this action-packed buddy-cop comedy. In Enter the Fat Dragon, he shows a humour and spontaneity that are a far cry from his once wooden delivery.

Directed by veteran stuntman Kenji Tanigaki from a script by Wong Jing ( Chasing the Dragon ), Lui Koon-nam ( Undercover Punch and Gun ) and Ronald Chan Kin-hung, this Lunar New Year offering takes the concept of Sammo Hung Kam-bo’s eponymous 1978 movie – of an overweight but physically imposing Bruce Lee fan – and refashions it into something resembling a mid-career Jackie Chan vehicle.

Yen plays Fallon Zhu, a Hong Kong policeman so obsessed with restoring order and saving everyone that he can’t seem to stop upsetting his fiancée Chloe (Niki Chow Lai-kei), a second-tier TV actress, or bringing trouble to his colleagues. After an improvised attempt to halt a bank robbery goes awry on the day he is due to take wedding photos, Zhu is demoted to the police force’s evidence room and ditched by Chloe.

Six months of relentless snacking ensue and Zhu has become a 250-pound (115kg) man when his colleague Shing (Louis Cheung Kai-chung) sends him on a mission to extradite a Japanese fugitive to Tokyo. Once there, Zhu is met by former Hong Kong cop Thor (Wong Jing) and his restaurateur partner (Teresa Mo Shun-kwan), as well as Japanese police inspector Endo (Naoto Takenaka) and his bubbly translator (Jessica Jann).

The action scenes come thick and fast in this movie, which barely takes note of Yen’s fat suit as it throws the actor into one massive brawl after another. Zhu may be a martial arts fan, and the film does make its customary nods to Bruce Lee, but its most memorable cinematic reference is not to classic kung fu cinema but to Yen’s own fight scene with Wu Jing from the 2005 crime thriller SPL – and it’s hilarious.

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