Review: Last Dragon Master (The Last Tycoon)

Spanning the early 1900s to the late 1930s China, Cheng Daqi (Huang Xiaoming) is in love with Ye Zhiqiu, who left him and their home town to become an opera star in Beijing. Cheng Daqi is framed for murder and imprisoned, where he meets Mao Zai (Francis Ng) a somewhat mysterious figure who helps Cheng Daqi bust out of prison…and teaches him how to kill. He starts a new life in Shanghai, takes up with Bao (Monika Mok), a singer, and becomes aligned with mob boss Hong Shouting (Sammo Hung). Some years later, Cheng Daqi (now played by Chow Yun-Fat, and having become a somewhat ‘honourable’ gangster himself) is shocked to catch a fleeting glance of his former love Ye Zhiqiu (now married to someone safe and boring, and played by Quan Yuan), and vice versa, having not seen one another in all this time.

 

As the Second Sino-Japanese War during WWII breaks out in 1937, Mao (now high up in the National Revolutionary Army) arranges for three plane seats out of danger, with Cheng Daqi, Ye Zhiqiu and her husband, whilst Bao volunteers to stay behind. However, Mao isn’t all that he appears, and it’s up to Cheng Daqi to rescue Bao and stop the plans of the Japanese General.

 

Referred to as “The Last Tycoon” in other English-speaking countries, I guess Australian distributors figured everyone was going to confuse this 2013 film from the eclectic and extremely prolific Wong Jing, for the shithouse 1976 Robert De Niro-starring film. It’s a surprisingly mature, stylishly lensed film for someone of Wong Jing’s rather…schlocky reputation (To put it mildly. Some call him the HK Roger Corman, but I think that’s being a bit insulting to ‘ol Roger, if anything). It’s also messy and clichéd, and the director definitely seems more at home with the action than anything else. There’s a particularly solidly staged bombing scene that seems to suggest the director actually had a decent budget and wasn’t just making a crude cheapie here.

 

Having said that, some of his cruder films are vastly more enjoyable than this. Sure, he’s the guy responsible for the pathetic Jackie Chan film “City Hunter”, but this is also the man who wrote and directed the insane action-comedy “The Last Blood”, wrote the sleazy but stylish action-thriller “Naked Killer”, and co-wrote the wild and gory “The Seventh Curse”, which was great fun. The choppy, montage-heavy mode of storytelling from the director and co-writer makes it really hard to latch onto anything. The flashbacks are also far less interesting than the rest of the film I must say. We get it, there love was never meant to be. Now get back to Chow Yun-Fat and Sammo Hung being all bad arse, OK? Even then, it feels very piecemeal, like you’re skim-reading or something. I also have to admit to being heartily sick of these Hong Kong and Chinese stories having Japanese as the go-to villains. I mean, c’mon. Let it go, guys. Let. It. Go. Chow Yun-Fat (who is strong presence personified and is wonderfully contained) and Francis Ng were the main things that kept me awake here, both are excellent, and Sammo is solid too, in a sadly too small role for my liking.

 

I’ll commend the director for tackling something a little more dramatic and ambitious here (he’s usually a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none), but he just hasn’t done a good job of it. It looks good, and Chow Yun-Fat is persuasive in the lead, but I felt at arm’s length for the most part, because I could never really latch on to anything. It felt like I was watching a 110 minute trailer to a longer film. It’s the damndest thing, and ultimately not very satisfying. Small, white subtitles that flash on and off way too fast don’t help, either. The screenplay is by the director, Manfred Wong (writer-director of “Bruce Lee, My Brother”), and Philip Lui (“Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen”, which also had a heavy anti-Japanese skewing).

 

Rating: C