Review: Dragon Eyes

Former MMA star Cung Le stars as an ex-con recently released who walks into a town needing a clean-up of local drug gangs and corrupt cops (chief among the latter is one Peter Weller, “Robocop” himself). Good thing he’s a martial arts exponent, tutored in prison by the no-nonsense Tiano (Jean-Claude Van Damme). Kristopher Van Varenberg (son of Mr. Van Damme) turns up as a corrupt cop, similar to the one he played in his dad’s vastly superior “Assassination Games”.

 

Ever since “Replicant”, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s performances have gotten better and his films have been consistently watchable (especially “Replicant”, “Until Death” and “The Expendables 2”), save for a few missteps here and there (notably “Derailed” and “The Order”).

However, this 2012 offering from director John Hyams (the surprisingly not bad “Universal Soldier: Regeneration”) and writer Tim Tori is a clichéd, derivative (especially if you know your Kurosawa and Charles Bronson), and lethargic affair that wastes the Belgian arse-kicker in what amounts to a glorified cameo. He’s basically playing the sensei role in a reversal to his films from the late 80s and early 90s. His tough love meets Buddha meets Bruce Lee performance is an interesting one, but the role is terrible. Hyams (who has worked with JCVD before, so perhaps he did this as a favour to the director) is quite shameless in spreading his scenes throughout the film to make it look like he plays a more prominent role than he actually does (He did, however, have enough time to manage to accidentally chip an extra’s tooth. Van Damme doesn’t much go for ‘play fighting’). He also says ‘OK’ more times than Joe Pesci in the “Lethal Weapon” series with at best ^1/3 of the screen time.

Cung Le, who has a bit of a Charles Bronson vibe about him (and the film could be seen as being somewhere in between Bronson’s “Death Wish III” and the low-budget street gang flick “Angel Town”- did I mention this film is clichéd and derivative?), and fights a bit like Jet Li meets Sammo Hung, with a touch of Tony Jaa. He has a lot more presence and acting talent than “Angel Town” star Olivier Gruner, however. It’s a shame he goes the stoic Bronson-esque route, because he speaks English pretty damn fluently. I wouldn’t mind seeing him in something else (He was in “Pandorum” and “Tekken”, but with much less screen time).

As good a fighter as Mr. Cung Le is, however, director Hyams does his absolute best to cock up the fights. Slow-mo is NOT necessary, Mr. Hyams, nor is rapid-fire editing. He also overdoses on filters, really cheap-looking ones that look like those old movies that used tinted colour to make B&W movies more ‘exciting’. It’s always more annoying if anything, and gave me nightmares of Albert Pyun flicks like “Mean Guns”. Strange then, that Hyams is the son of journeyman cinematographer/director Peter Hyams (who himself directed JCVD in “Timecop” and “Sudden Death”). Why can’t filmmakers just point and shoot anymore? It’s not frigging hard. Directors have been doing it for decades.

The only true bright spot here is an amusing performance by veteran Peter Weller. The role is beneath him, but that ship has long sailed, and he’s at least the only one here who genuinely looks to be having a ball. Some of that rubs off on the audience, to lift this to ‘average’ instead of ‘crap’. He’s got a Richard Widmark vibe to him here, and easily walks off with the whole film. He’s surrounded by a bunch of boring, nondescript thugs (minority thugs, of course), and a pretty boring film.

This is a whole lot of nothing, really. If you’ve seen any version of “Yojimbo”, or if you’ve seen “Angel Town”, “Blood and Bone” (an excellent showcase for Michael Jai White), or “Death Wish III”, there’s definitely no need to see this, even if it’s a better film than a couple of the aforementioned.

 

The nadir of the film is a scene involving two nauseatingly overacting, profane drug addicts. It’s a pointless Tarantino-esque excursion that wasn’t necessary and doesn’t really belong here.

This movie isn’t much, and Van Damme is wasted (therefore I can’t really lay any of the blame on him), but Weller is good fun, and Cung Le might prove an action star to watch in the future. Just not here.

Rating: C