The Dragon From Russia DVD Region All

Lifted off a train Sam is brainwashed and trained to become a hired assassin who will wreak havoc with a foot-long shining steel needle. Recognized by Maggie Cheung while on a job he is assigned to rub her out, and he does. This unfolds against a backdrop of war with a Japanese crime family being taken over by its hired gun, Huntress (Carrie Ng - all lips and pouts and kimonoed cleveage - black ice menace wrapped up in sin, a razor blade in your soft ice cream cone).

Twisting and turning across the screen and off the map these characters disappear and reappear like flickering wraiths. The Chinese diaspora is a world of warring underground societies where missing people and friends sold into servitude by other friends are the order of the day. The wax-faced Master of the Dead is played by choreographer and Seven Little Fortune, Yuen Tak (doubled by Yuen Wah in the train scene), who is fearsomely unleashed in the final reel. Tsui Hark without the budget, Fok's confusing comic book melange has a core of sadness at its heart that is hard to ignore. Amidst the fleeing, fighting figures jumping out of belltowers and slashing one another's throats there is the sound of a man who misses his friends.

One of the last Cinema City films (and a box office flop at that) this is a zarked out tribute to the last of some old style superstars: Cinema City co-founder Dean Shek plays a sober Snooker, legendary pop star and actor Sam Hui is Yao, up-and-coming-but-not-quite-there-yet Maggie Cheung plays May, Yuen Tak makes his screen debut, and Carrie Ng, Loletta Lee and Nina Li play Huntress, Pearl, and Chimer respectively. A perfect popcorn flick, instead of straining to understand this movie, sit back, turn off your brain, and let it wash over you.

by Grady Hendrix