Dragon Blade is a new period piece action movie coming to theaters and Video-On-Demand on Sept 4, 2015 (it was previously released in China). Dragon Blade stars Jackie Chan (as Huo An), John Cusack (as Lucius), Adrien Brody (as Tiberius) and Lin Peng (as Cold Moon) — East meets West as Chinese Martial Artists conduct battle with the Roman Empire.
Dragon Blade is one of the largest scaled Chinese Productions boasting a budget over 65 million and shares screen time with both Asian and American A-list actors. The film was written and directed by Daniel Lee who has a handful of period piece martial arts films under his belt. Most of Dragon Blade is about Jackie Chan’s group of Silk Road Protection Squad who are all skilled in combat and rely heavily on defense over offense as they attempt to stop quarrels between warring factions. Jackie Chan as an actor is no longer in his prime but he is clever enough to pace his fighting moves in a way that convinces the audience he can still fight off an army. John Cusack’s character is a Roman legion commander who is on the run from the Empire with a liberated future leader child in his possession. Cusack is hard to swallow as a fierce combat leader but has tons of armor and a big fancy sword.
All roads converge on the Wild Geese Gate once Jackie and his group make friends and allies with Cusack’s soldiers. Jackie’s motto is to ‘Turn Foes Into Friends’ and he is mostly successful in this quest until the supreme villain of the story shows up in the form of Adrien Brody who is so ‘bad-ass’ that he can catch a blade thrown at him with his bare hand. We’re not quite sure what Brody’s motives are or what he wants exactly but it must have something to do with killing the child in Cusack’s possession or killing Cusack himself or just killing as many people as possible.
Ultimately Dragon Blade was a mix bag for us — there were moments that visually were stunning and epic with a handful of fight scenes standing out like inside a town where everyone is shooting arrows at each other or watching Jackie and the Romans hurl boulders down a staircase to fiend off enemies. Cinematically the use of ‘slow motion’ was completely over used and took away more then it added. Editorially Dragon Blade shows flash forwards and flash backs as ‘sneak peaks’ to what is coming ahead but acts more like ‘cinematic spoilers’ than anything else. Probably the most upsetting part of Dragon Blade was the uncomfortable laughter and groans by the audience witnessing death scenes played out way over the top or just seemingly out of place – especially one towards the end on which the entire audience laughed out loud.