Dragon Lord is a 1982 Hong Kong martial artsaction-comedy film directed by and starring Jackie Chan, who also wrote the film with Edward Tang and Barry Wong. It was originally supposed to be a sequel to The Young Master and even had the name Young Master in Love until it was changed to Dragon Lord. The film experimented with various elaborate stunt action sequences in a period setting, serving as a transition between Chan's earlier comedy kung fu comedy period films and his later stunt-oriented modern action films.
Plot
Dragon is the son of a Chinese aristocrat who is always getting in trouble, and likes to skip his lessons. Dragon tries to send a love note to the girl he likes via a kite, but the kite gets away. Dragon tries to get the kite and letter back which have landed on the roof of the headquarters of a gang of thieves who are planning to steal artifacts from the towns temple. Dragon interferes with the gang’s plans and is forced to fight of the gang.
Dragon Lord went over budget and took twice as long to shoot as was originally planned due to Chan's many retakes of shots to get them exactly as he wanted them. One scene in the film is reputed to have taken 2900 takes to complete, although sources disagree on whether the scene in question is the opening scene involving a human pyramid or a sequence depicting a Jianzi game. The opening bun festival scene was originally intended to end the film but was moved as Chan wanted a spectacular opening to the film. The final fight scene, which takes place in a barn, also featured elaborate stunts, including one where Chan does a back flip off a loft and falls to the lower ground. According to his book I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, Chan injured his chin during a stunt, making it difficult to say his lines and direct. This is the first Jackie Chan film that includes outtakes, which was inspired by Jackie Chan from The Cannonball Run. His later films all include outtakes.
Release and box office
In its original Hong Kong theatrical run, Dragon Lord grossed 17,936,344. The film did not make as much as it was expected to in Hong Kong, but was a big hit in Japan. It was 1982's ninth highest-grossing foreign film in Japan, where it grossed . In Taiwan, it became the 14th highest-grossing film of 1982, earning . In South Korea, it was the highest-grossing film of 1982, with 298,122 ticket sales in the capital Seoul City, equivalent to an estimated . Combined, the film's total estimated box office gross in East Asia was approximately . Hong Kong Legends released the DVD on 25 August2003 in the United Kingdom. Dimension Films released the film on DVD in the U.S. on 11 May 2004.
Reception
Joey O'Bryan of The Austin Chronicle rated it 2.5/5 stars and wrote that the film, while not one of Chan's best, is an early attempt to take the genre into a new direction and set the stage for many of Chan's better, more-realized films. O'Bryan highlighted the film's climactic fight as a "worth the price of admission all by itself". TV Guide rated it 3/5 stars and wrote, "Aside from the meandering, stop-and-go screenplay, there's much to admire about the film. " John Sinnott of DVD Talk rated it 3.5/5 stars called it a "fun movie" that moves away from conventional martial arts films.
