I put on The Invincible Dragon (2019) because I was in the mood for some mindless Asian action. What I got was either much less, or much more mindless than I thought.
We meet Kowloon (Max Zhang) in hot water. Gangsters have in tied up and in a pot being boiled in a Hong Kongbanquet hall kitchen. The gang suspects him of being a police informer. He tells them the story of the dragon tattooed on his chest. When he was a kid, he spent one summer day playing in a pond with a nine-headed dragon - the best day of his life. He felt the dragon would always protect him. The gangsters laugh at him and pull him out of the pot to kill him. Of course, once he's out, he fights his way free, kills the henchmen and chases the boss into the banquet. He gets him down and shoots him through the wrist, causing the boss' hand to wind up on someone's plate.
It seems Zhang was a policeman, after all. He is swiftly demoted for this exhibition, and sent to the boondocks. He has cleaned up, shaved the gangster soul patch and got a haircut. Even though things are usually quiet, policewomen start getting killed around him. He has a serial killer on his hands, and seems to be related to the case.
His method of of investigation is largely putting himself into the killer's shoes and imagining the crime. Or is he remembering it? He seems a little unstable.
When his policewoman fiancee is killed, he snaps. He is kicked out of the police, starts drinking, grows his hair and beard, earns a living getting beat up in fixed underground fight clubs. One of his old coworkers says he was a bad policeman, but a great fake boxer.
As the movie goes on, he gets twitchier and twitchier. One character, a good looking doctor who wants to help, notes that he's counting people again - PTSD, OCD, who knows what else. But he does try to solve the case.
SPOILER - He figures out who the culprit is by seeing him in a vision. Maybe dragon related?
It turns out that director Fruit Chan is more of an arthouse director, not an action movie director. He did try to make this a commercial action film. Did not entirely succeed. Zhang is an action star, so the fight scenes were fine. It's also interesting to see him undercover, then cleaned up, then going crazy.
The final fighter with - SPOILER - UFC monster Anderson Silva, is pretty funny. They started trading movie cliches like "We're not so different, you and me," and accusing each other of stealing their lines.
