Dragon Blade (2015)
When the eagle meets the dragon.
I see a trailer of Jackie Chan fighting a roman and I’m in. Simple man, I know, but nothing wrong with that you know? America isn’t the only place with sword and sandals style movies, and China never seems to not have that same level of extra that makes them more fun, even though I’m sure some wouldn’t be as appreciative of it when you tag in that “based on historical events” label. Anyways, let’s go find out what happens when the eagle meets the dragon, tonight we watch Dragon Blade.
Now I’m no historian so I can’t speak to authenticity of the events on display here. Our story follows a bit of two characters, each with their own little story that ends up getting combined. On the one hand, we have the Chinese protector of the Silk Road. They get in trouble for some smuggling - seems awfully suspicious even being such a short time in, but hey - they end up getting shipped off to do some manual labor repairing a broken up city. While there, they encounter our Roman character. On his end, him and his troops are fleeing with their kid leader on account of a power-crazy ruthless competition trying to kill the little guy. Our Chinese main’s philosophy is to make friends not foes, and ends up establishing quite the camaraderie between the two factions. Of course, wouldn’t be much of a movie without conflict, and it comes knocking in forces.
The acting here is pretty decent for the most part. There’s a few moments, particularly from our lead Roman, where it seems a bit worse for wear but largely it’s all good enough. I can’t attest to the line deliveries for the other groups on account of not speaking them, but it seems well enough. They deliver some humor here and there, and you can have the occasional melodramatic delivery, but I don’t think it’s really going to be something that kills the enjoyment of the movie. The kid has moments of good, but also I’m not gonna put him on a pedestal or anything, considering there’s been some really good child actors in modern years.
The characters don’t get an absolute ton of time to develop outside of the mains, but it’s more about giving them a history and then building that quick relationship. It can very much feel like a power of friendship situation, but that’s also not really a bad thing necessarily. The Main’s penchant to not kill adds a bit of style to him that you don’t always get, a little bit of extra depth - between that and his numerous interactions with not-warrior type folks that most the rest don’t get. Most the other characters don’t get anything as far as development that isn’t just a quick inspirational speech motivated change of intention. Perhaps not the strongest point of the movie, but if nothing else you do get to dislike the main villain quite quickly.
Lady has moves
I feel like I might be coming off as far more harsh than I actually feel I intended, but I try to lean into both sides of things and I guess that’s just the nature of it. While watching it, none of the stuff I’ve talked about so far really bothered me - sans one line of delivery towards the end that I wouldn’t call bad, just odd in how it was delivered. Where you won’t get any complaints from me is the props department. Yep, that’s right, nothing but props for the props. Outfits all look quite unique amongst the groups, and although it’s not the first-to-mind lamellar pattern that we think of when we think Roman soldiers it’s still all good looking. Small little interesting tidbits crop up as well, such as the little sword-clinging hook the peace forces use to retain their swords and give it a little extra reach, or the ancient-times equivalent of a box magazine with a fold out wall of arrows for archers. Sometimes it’s a simple little thing like using shields to move rocks, and other times it’s just an interesting design of armor.
Details like that can crop up elsewhere as well, such as some of the Roman soldiers passing out in the earlier scenes after being driven so hard without proper supplies. Of course, I think where things probably excel the most is within the action sequences. There are plenty of fights, and when things get to being one on one is when it really ends up being the most thrilling. Yes, it can like to cut at times, but it’s always still quite clear whats going on so you don’t feel like you are getting whiplash - and some of that probably comes from how easily distinguished different characters are between each other until we get to the final grand melee. It’s also fun to see the little bouts between the two groups as they become friends, seeing how each reacts to the others fighting styles and how easily that camaraderie grows from it. It’s also not all limited to just dude on dude fights either, getting in a lady who can handle her own at the front of a tribe who has an interesting tactic with birds.
Audio was there, and it fit the moments it needed to. I know it was there this time - the later days Chan movies tend to have moments that focus on music, so they tend to stand out a bit more even though the normal retention issues still occur with me. Still, it fits everything well and they use it thoughtfully in the emotional context of things. Balance is normally quite well done, but I admit I had a few times when I just couldn’t for the life of me make out what the villain was saying. It’s less to do with the delivery and more to do with how quiet it was, and that could have been intentional for sure, but I got to point i out otherwise. Normally I’d have remedied it by reading the subtitles, but the movie had hard-coded subs for the Chinese lines, so I turned off the closed captioning ones as I’d rather read what was being said then it being blocked by over-laying “Speaking Mandarin” or whatever it was writing at the time. Thankfully, the amount of times I just couldn’t hear it was minimal, so it’s not too much of an issue.
The trailer pitch
This was an interesting movie. I enjoyed the action scenes, and I love the “inspired by” thing implying that to whatever level these events actually occurred. Part of that is largely because I enjoy that power of friendship motto, despite my general dislike of the masses - I know, surprising. The fights are good, the costumes are great. The acting is normally good enough, and the effects are most the time well enough done - the movie might skip a step here or there, but it’s never bad enough to really ruin it in my opinion, so I’d have to argue I’m more with the “4.5 stars out of 5” side of things than the IMDb 5.9 out of 10 side this time around.