Jackie Chan and company, circa 1986. Chan, Hung, and Biao, who all started out together as children in the tough-as-nails Peking Opera School (beautifully documented in the film Painted Faces), team up this time out in a seriocomic film featuring love, narcotics manufacturers, and the law as seen through Chan’s eyes. Chan is Jackie Lang, a Hong Kong public defender who is apparently in cahoots with Hung and semi-crazy pal Biao in a scheme to buy out an innocent widow’s fishing pond, which is being polluted by the local chemical company. Hung tries to woo the woman (Pauline Yeung) by moving in next door to her and making her life miserable, while Chan has the hots for the woman’s lawyer, Catherine (Yip). Biao pops up as the duo’s scatterbrained, neurotic crony and proceeds to make a mess of the whole affair. Meanwhile, an armed-to-the teeth group of hoods is out to get the three of them (ostensibly), and things go from bad to worse when Hung discovers that the chemical company is really nothing more than a front for heroin production. There’s plenty of Chan and Hung’s trademark humor here, but fortunately Chan manages (somehow — perhaps repeated threats of violence?) to keep the audience-mugging to a comfortable minimum. Foregoing the 9mm action of filmmakers like John Woo and Tsui Hark, Dragons Forever instead opts for plenty of over-the-top fist-fighting which climaxes in one of the more brutal hand-to-hand face-offs yet seen. Hung wisely lets the dual romantic subplots catch up to the crime drama, which makes for an almost tender story of Luv ‘n’ Thugs. It may not be Supercop and it may not be Police Story, but Hung pulls off a nifty good-guy, bad-guy actioner that stands on its own.
This article appears in July 15 • 1994 (Cover).