That second title was a modest hit for Warner Brothers, drawing $55 million domestically, so Kiss of the Dragon followed quickly on its heels, with Fox at the reigns this time around. Remember when Jet Li was a suitable leading man for a 20–30 million dollar film? He was making big waves in America coming off a nice turn in the underrated Lethal Weapon 4 and his first starring role in an English language film alongside Aaliyah in Romeo Must Die. So it is with great reverence for both film and culture that we follow Jet Li to the City of Lights in…īuckle your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Anyway, France! They love food almost as much as we do, and, thanks in large part to guys like Jean-Pierre Melville and Luc Besson, they love their ass-kicking action cinema as well. I’ll begin by smashing it to bits and then taking the bits and smashing those into smithereens, but then I’ll pick up the broken pieces and lovingly put it back together with wood glue and duct tape.Īs if that weren’t enough, I’ll provide you with a delicious snack to stuff in your gaping maw, satisfying your cravings for bloodshed and trans-fatty hydrogenated oils. As always, I’ve selected a film of somewhat dubious quality but high entertainment value. Besides, we all know that diabetes is just a lie the vegans made up to keep us away from things that taste good. He says it’s another diabetic coma, but I know he’s just faking it. And by “we” I mean I, and by “decided” I mean your regular host, the Duke of Salisbury, is passed out on the floor again. With the eyes of the film world on France for the annual wine festival armpit hair growing festival Nazi joke festival Cannes Film Festival, we here at Junkfood Cinema decided to set our sights on that classy nation as well. If that’s what you smell too, then you’re in the right place. No, wait, je sais afterall! That quoi is the nostril singing aroma of fried foods and stale Funyuns. For Kiss of the Dragon, alongside action scenes like Li's final showdown with future District 13 star Cyril Raffaelli, Nahon's missed "Cut!" call and Li's speed and reflexes combine to give a far better, and more real, start to one of the film's lightning-fast martial arts fights.Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema, the weekly feature with that certain je ne sais quoi. While everyone involved takes the necessary precautions to avoid them, such misjudged timing can occasionally end up being a blessing in disguise in the accidental ways they can enhance a fight scene's impact. Mistakes like Nahon forgetting to call for a take to cut and Li proceeding with the beginning of a fight scene happen at times in the making of martial arts films. It proved to be the right move, with Kiss of the Dragon often hailed as one of Li's best Western-produced action movies. The popularity of Li's 1994 movie Fist of Legend was the main template in this regard. We tried to do a third, but it wasn't as real as this one, and Jet is always ready for that." Nahon's description of this mistaken early attack by Li as the most real is very fitting when it comes to Kiss of the Dragon's approach to its martial arts sequences.įor Kiss of the Dragon, Li and the production team sought to minimize the use of wires in the film's fight scenes for a more realistic style, with wire-fu only very sparingly used at certain points in the movie. As Nahon explained, " It was the best one. In the end, the take of Li grabbing Ryan too soon was the one that was used in Kiss of the Dragon as the starting point of the martial arts fight sequence it led into. Despite this not being planned, the shocked look on Ryan's face ended up working out very well for the scene. In the documentary Jet Li - Fighting Philosophy, Fonda states " I didn't know, Max didn't know, Jet didn't know" with respect to Li's continuing of the fight choreography not being intended. Ryan and everyone else were caught off guard by this, and as seen on the Kiss of the Dragon DVD, this proved to be to the movie's advantage. RELATED: How Jet Li's The One Used Martial Arts To Create A Perfect Multiverse Fight Jet Li, whose blinding speed has been well-known since he began his career in The Shaolin Temple movie series, was unaware that Nahon didn't mean for the scene to continue, and initiated Liu's attack on Lupo. However, on one take, director Chris Nahon forgot to say 'Cut!'. The dialogue portion of the scene and the fight scene were planned to be shot individually, with the scene cutting before Liu grabs Lupo, pulls him back onto a table, and strikes him. In one fight scene in Kiss of the Dragon, Jessica's abusive pimp Lupo (May Ryan) repeatedly strikes her, and Liu's intervention kicks off a fight scene with Lupo's cohorts.
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