Dragon and the Hawk [Import]

Ok, this one time, I watched this show on TV where two guys from Kentucky were having a mouth-harp duel, and it was the lamest thing I ever saw.
Until I saw this.
The plot and action sequences were so engrossing that ten minutes into the film, I found myself distracted by an interesting piece of lint mined from my belly-button.
After about twenty minutes, my attention was wrenched from my lint activities by the dying wail of a fly on the TV screen committing suicide (very haunting).
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy a bad, campy martial arts flick, but the cheesy dialogue, flat characters and mechanical fight scenes this travesty vomits at the viewer are beyond human (and apparently fly) limits.
My advice would be to forget about purchasing this student film project.
Save your money and wrangle up some belly-button lint of your own! It's free, more entertaining, and altogether more worthy of your time, attention and contemplation than anything this cinematic sweat sock has to offer.
Probably more hygienic too.

What happens when you take a hackneyed, b-grade comic book plot, and cross it with wooden acting and slow, boring fights?

You get The Dragon and the Hawk.

I've been a fan of kung fu flicks for years, and this one ranks just under Fists of Legend 2 for the worst kung fu movie I've ever seen. The actors visibly wait for their turn to start speaking, then they spend so much time trying to remember their lines that they manage to suck out any possible emotion. To compound matters, the dialogue is trite and blatantly banal whenever possible, so the only emotion you can experience is irritation any time someone opens their mouth. Even the supposedly humorous parts are killed by the Frankenstein quality acting exhibited by all involved in the production.

But then who cares about the writing in a kung fu movie? It's the action you're there to see right? This movie fails to deliver in this category as well. Fights are slow, poorly choreographed, and the last few sequences take place in locations that are so dark it's hard to see what's going on. Case in point, one sequence involves Dragon running up to a wall, jumping up to push off the wall, then Dragon pushes off the wall and does absolutely nothing. He just lands in front of the guy who was chasing him. What would've made more sense would be for Dragon to push off the wall and kick his pursuer. After a testy exchange with the assistant producer, (she threatened to have this review removed at one point, also accused me of being part of the apparently disgruntled production crew) I was told that they wanted Dragon to actually do the kick, but none of those shots came out right, so they just threw in a mistaken take instead. The music blows as well.

I can't see any reason to claim this movie's good. It has no redeeming qualities at all. When there's stuff like Jackie Chan, and Jet Li out there, or even David Carradine's Warrior and the Sorceress, there's absolutely no reason to bother with this one unless you just need something to make fun of Mystery Science Fiction Theater style. (Which is actually impossible since a movie with intentional camp and no earnestness doesn't have that ironically funny bent at all...)

At first glance, I was excited to watch "Dragon and the Hawk," an interestingly packaged DVD with all the right graphics and cover art.
And it seemed like a good idea for a kung-fu movie - apart from the same old plot. Girl goes to America to find dream, gets lost, kung-fu master brother (Dragon - Julian Jung Lee) comes to America to find her, beats up bad guys, happy ending.
With plenty of wham-bam, in-your-face-action.
I'm sad to say that this move flops on all counts, even the action.
Barbara Gehring plays a police detective - Hawk - who teams up with Dragon to find the missing sister. They share a link - both of their sisters are missing.
Enter the bad guy. Trygve Lode is the scheming, stiff and stereotypical Therion who is concocting some super-soldier drug and testing it on girls his thugs nab off the street.
And thus we get the Dragon and Hawk fighting Therion's bad guys and trying to save the girls.
I've seen some very bad movies in my time, believe me. But even "Ishtar" had moments that were actually funny and "Little Nicky" had some great lines.
This move isn't even campy-funny. It's rotten. The camera work is boring - each fight seen is shot from the same high-angle crane shot - and the dialogue is so stiff I was begging for some Hong Kong filmmakers to come along and dub their own English actors' voices over these bozos.
And that's bad for some of these Americans, I tell you.
Besides the acting and action, I was very perturbed to hear unnecessary swearing. It's as if the scriptwriter decided that, "Oh, this goofy scene needs some more punch!" and then dropped awkward vulgarities into the script, just to get the "R" rating. Even the actors doing the swearing looked funny saying the words, as if they knew that not even in real life do people swear this weirdly.
The only redeeming quality is that the soundtrack seemed upbeat and the DVD's special features had a music video that was actually worth watching.
But a music video does not a DVD make.
Save your pennies. If this ever makes it onto cable TV, it will definitely be on some late-nite, make-fun-of-the-movie show.
But this isn't even Mystery Science Theater 3000 funny. It's just bad.
This movie deserves a solid D-.