KISS OF THE DRAGON
* ½ stars
Drop kick this silly chopsocky thriller.
KISS of the Dragon” is a Jet Li vehicle in which the Hong Kong superstar outkicks and outwits virtually the entire Paris police department -but can’t lick what may be the year’s silliest action script.
That’s saying a lot in the wake of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Swordfish” -but they didn’t boast the unlikely writing team of French director Luc Besson (“The Messenger”), who also produced, and Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote the first two “Karate Kid” movies before collaborating with Besson on the equally inscrutable “The Fifth Element.”
Li plays Liu, a top Chinese secret agent summoned to the City of Light for a drug sting involving a Chinese businessman.
But it’s a setup -the businessman is assassinated by French cops and Liu is framed for the killing by Richard (Tcheky Kayro), a hugely corrupt, high-ranking Parisian police official with a small army at his disposal.
Liu has a videotape establishing his innocence, but when he tries to turn it over to a Chinese diplomatic attache aboard a glass boat on the Seine -where else would you want to arrange a clandestine meeting? -they’re greeted with a hail of machine-gun fire.
We haven’t seen so much artillery and random destruction of public property since “3,000 Miles to Graceland” -or maybe it was “The Art of War,” the Wesley Snipes vehicle that had a similar secret-agent-on-the-run plot but was a lot more fun.
“Kiss of the Dragon” has its moments, especially when Liu single-handedly storms Paris police headquarters, at one point taking out a couple of dozen martial-arts trainees with his fists and feet.
His foes may have guns, but Liu has his feet -and also wreaks havoc with a well-aimed pool ball, chopsticks jammed in the throat and the business end of a steam iron, among other implements.
Liu is also a master acupuncturist; the title refers to the results of a particularly gruesome procedure that provides the coup de grace for the rather gory proceedings.
But as an actor, Li is powerless when the film slows to a crawl to provide a little drama, first with the elderly owner of a shrimp-chip store who shelters our hero (played by Burt Kwouk, the karate-chopping manservant of the “Pink Panther” movies).
Even worse are his belabored scenes with Bridget Fonda as Jessica, an American junkie who’s been forced into prostitution by Richard for reasons known only to Besson and Kamen.
Jessica, the only surviving witness to the assassination that set up Liu, just happens to wander into the shrimp-chip store.
Following another shootout, they bicker and conduct an impromptu funeral service for the proprietor on the steps of Notre Dame cathedral. No kidding.
Fonda is terrible, which is somewhat understandable under the circumstances. But the scenery-chewing honors belong to Kayro, who practically seems to be twirling a mustache (though he doesn’t have one).
The direction is attributed to Chris Nahon, who is identified as a French director of TV commercials. The only thing this film seems to be advertising is mindless idiocy.
