Heart of the Dragon (1985)
'...Heart of the Dragon starring Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung and directed by Sammo Hung. The film was unusual in that it also features a contribution from the third of the famous Chinese Opera School brothers, Yuen Biao.’
’… we see Jackie leading away that drug addict, there’s another sequence where they go to a clinic… and he’s killed by some gangsters who’re lead by Lau Ka Wing, who’s a kung fu master of the old school… And that whole sequence has actually one of the best actions for Jackie. As ever, Sammo really brings out the best from Jackie Chan
, he
really forces him to go to the limits of his abilities as a martial
artist and a stuntman. The scene was actually shot and cut down and
I’ve been asking various people preparing this DVD quite why this was
the case… and apparently this piece was not just cut for the
international print but for the HK print as well and when they actually
looked the whole film, they decided it wasn’t necessary to have so much
action sequences in what was really a dramatic movie, that was the
feeling… So that decision was taken, rightly or wrongly – obviously my
view wrongly – because I don’t think many people go to see a Sammo Hung
– Jackie Chan film purely for the drama. The Japanese market was
absolutely adamant, they had to have more action scenes, the two action
sequences were left intact. A friend of mine who was living in HK at
that time actually remembers seing different versions of Heart of the
Dragon playing in different theaters in HK and that’s very possible,
because normally the cost of producing extra print is prohibited so
they may actually reused a couple of existing prints of the Japanese
version to fill theaters in HK.’
’Sammo had a whole bunch of actors, action actors, dramatic and comedic actors, with whom he was working during this era, so if you watch a lot of his films, as I have to guiltfully admit I have, then you actually get to see the same faces again and again.’
’Jackie and Sammo on camera and Yuen Biao behind the scenes as action director, action coordinator. So the three brothers from the glory days of the Chinese Opera School were all working on the Heart of the Dragon. The film in itself to me works very well, because both Sammo and Jackie, they are so well known for doing action and stunt but they really don’t get the credit they deserve as actors, and I think Sammo Hung actually is a very good dramatic actor
but he was under
pressure all the time. In fact when the sequence was shot (restaurant scene),
the producers from Golden Harvest were saying „Look, can’t you fight?”
And Sammo says: „How can I fight? I’m playing a mentally ill or
retarded person”. And they were saying: „Can’t you fight like a
retarded person would fight?”. Sammo quite rightly stuck to his guns
and said „No, I give you two other action scenes with Jackie’s
character but my role in the movie is to be kind of the more pathetic
character, somebody who’s more a victim of circumstance than somebody
who’s gonna be hitting everybody up”. And I think he plays this really
well. Of course the interesting thing is from the audience’s point of
view is that Sammo is Dai Go Dai, he’s the Big Brother of the Cantonese
film industry and there was added interest to see him playing this
character who was obviously the weakest element in the film in terms of
the plot. I love Jackie’s performance here because it was really brave
in that he moved away from the general running of the film, he moves
away from that kind of happy-go-lucky easy-going Mr. Nice Guy that he
normally is and there’s more of an edge to his personality. He is more
selfish, there’s more maturity, there’s kind of a selfishness in his
relationship with Emily Chu, he is more mature, they’re like kissing
and there’s an expression of affection that you normally don’t get in
Jackie’s movies. His relationship with women in his own films is really
quite mockish but there is a sense that there’s a real relatioship
going on.’’I mentioned earlier about the kind of added value for HK audiences in the fact they are seing Sammo playing like a
younger
brother role, when he is Dai Go Dai, Biggest of Big Brothers, but it’s
particulary interesting to see him and Jackie in this relationship,
because everybody knows that Sammo is the one guy that Jackie
absolutely respects back from the days when both of them were training
under Master Yu Jim Yuen in Peking Opera School and Jackie really has
respect for nobody in the world more than he has respect for Sammo.
It’s interesting to see this relationship reversed on screen… The
playing between them is very good because you never feel them whinning
at the camera. Sammo’s playing somebody who’s kind of mentally
challenged but not in the cutesy way, he’s actually playing it with all
the different spectrum of emotions of somebody in this unfortunate state
of being. At the same time Jackie doesn’t play it nice and cute, he is
not this kind of noble guy who sacrificed his own happiness, his own
well-being purely to take care of his brother, so it’s like a reality
to it.’’I think one of the reasons why this film is more appeciated overseas than it was appreciated in HK, is because in HK people have a preconception of how they want their idols to behave. So they know what they wanted from Sammo and Jackie and even Anthony Chan. And you see this film, and everybody’s kind of subverting their normal persona for the cause of the story, which is quite a common thing in America people to play against type, and quite successfully. Comic actors like Jim Carrey and Robert Williams have had much acclaim for playing more dramatic roles. In HK there’s much less tolerance for that. The audience going in, they want to know what they’re getting and I think in this movie they were taken by surprise which explains why the film wasn’t a blockbuster. But internationally among the fan community in the West, even from when it was first released on video in England, it really found an audience, people like lot of things about the film, particulary the fact that the performance was so strong… I like the strength that Jackie shows here, that beneath this kind of rather cold exteriour there really is the heart of the dragon. And that he is this guy who’s been given this difficult duty in life that he has to be the protector of his elder brother.’
’This scenario (Jackie beating and shouting at Sammo) I think works very well and again it’s very easy with melodrama to take it too far or underplay it, and I think these guys by vertue being the experienced actors they are,
really hit every note in their scenes together. And
I’ve seen some reviews of the movie where they say this is the HK take
on Rainman and of course the reality is this movie probably wasn’t
widely released in the West until after Rainman came out, but this
movie was made in 1985 or at least it was released in 1985 and Rainman came out in 1988. So obviously there is no connection between
them other than thematically there seems to be a certain crossover. The
same could be said incidentally of Sammo Hung’s film Paper Marriage
which actually came out before Peter Weir’s Green card… I really
appreciate the fact that you really got to see some of the potential of
Jackie as a dramatic actor and recently he’s played lip service to the
fact that as he matures he wants to do more dramatic work. In fact now
as we speak, he’s shooting the movie New Police Story and certainly
from the script and the material I’ve seen on it, it is more towards a
dramatic role than just a kind of happy-go-lucky character he’s played
most of his career. And I think this is really a necessary transition
for him because I think you cannot have an entire career up until
middle age and beyond playing a kid, basically a kid character. So here
he’s really showing a lot of the dramatic chops that he’s gonna show
hopefully in the latter section of his career. But I think he’s really
underrated as an actor and if anybody was actually going to talk about
his action in a …. way, I’d say look at some of the scenes in Heart of
the Dragon. Sammo also is wonderful. I mean if you see him in movies
like Painted Faces or Eight Tales of Gold, you see that unlike
Jackie he is somebody who is a fine actor but has been given a chance
to prove it, whereas Jackie’s really been limited by the fact that
everytime he’s trying to do something adventurous he’s kind of been
talked out of it by people saying „no, you have to conform to the image
your worldwide fans have of you”…’ ’Sammo really is responsible for supporting the careers of dozens and dozens of people both in front of and behind the camera’.
’The other thing I should point out that’s interesting about Sammo’s look is that he’s constantly modified, given the fact that he’s always going to be heavy set, he’s modified his look to fit roles very well over the years and what he did here was great, giving himself this pinning ball(?) haircut from which immediately the audience sees it, you know that something’s really not quite right about this guy and really he plays wonderfully well. Sammo really had to constantly throughout this movie making the transition of being the Sammo Hung who’s behind the camera, completely in charge of the whole operation and the rather pathetic character he plays in the film itself… Sammo himself doesn’t get to fight in the movie but he does find some stunts for his character to do, so you get this kind of a roll down the hillside and the use of slow motion to kind of convey the helplessness of the character and the fact that he’s rolling down, it’s not a controlled fall or a controlled roll… The other thing is he’s very smart in that you do get to see his face so much of the time that you know when it’s him and it’s very clearly defined. Some of the action movies in the West when they used the actual actor to perform a stunt and because the camera angle wasn’t right you really couldn’t see that it was them so you might as well use a stuntman.’
’In the background in the pink shirt is the real younger brother of
Sammo Hung. Sammo’s grandmother (Chin Tsi-ang) had been one of the great martial arts
queens of the early black and white Chinese cinema, and so it was
natural that members of that family would actually get into the
industry before and behind the camera. So Sammo actually has a number
of siblings who work in various ways. His sister Fanny is actually the
continuity girl on many HK movies, she was on The Medallion and many
other pictures as well. And Sammo’s sons now have come in industry so
it’s kind of almost three or four generations of the Hung family who’re
contributing their unique talents to Asian Cinema and now to World
Cinema as well.’
’Sammo got permission to film while it was under construction (Regal Riverside Hotel, Shatin). It is said that actually they caused so much damage by performing stunts they had not notified the management about, that Sammo was actually banned from the Hotel for two years. I got that story from Mike Leader so if it’s a bit exaggarated then maybe that’s Sammo having some fun with Mike and apologies to the Regal Riverside. I can’t think why anybody would ban Sammo from anywhere for anything. But anyway, apparently that was what happened.’ „This gag here that we see with Peter Chan Lung is
actually (his
nickname is Mogu which means Unfortunate) and see how unfortunate he
is. It’s exactly the same gag in Shanghai Express off him falling
down and collapsing unconscious until the end of the movie. Sammo has
always those little jokes he likes to throw in for his own amusement
and for amusement of people who like myself see the film far too many
times.”
’I love this line when Jackie says „Don’t try to stop me” and Dick
Wei’s character says „It’s my profession, it’s like it’s my job, I’m
not doing this because I hate you, I’m doing this because it’s my job”.
So it gives another little twist to the character, which is something
like a big forte of Sammo, who actually always finds humanity in good
guys and bad guys, he finds the weakness of a hero and the darkness in
a hero and the lightness in a villain. This is one of his great
strengths as a filmmaker. I hope he’ll come back and make some other
great films as director.’