A former member of a band of criminals known as the 'Eight-Hundred Dragons' is living in fear in Manchuria as the clan does not allow people to leave alive. However, he is eventually tracked down, and kidnapped along with a young Manchurian, Yao - whose memory is erased so that he can be trained in martial arts. Yao's work as an assassin becomes more complicated, however, when he sees his old lover again and his real memories come flooding back.
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It is forgivable for Maggie Cheung for acting in such a crappy action drama, with her excellence performance in the later stage of her acting career life, where Centrestage, Irma Vep, In the Mood for Love and Clean makes up for the crap she acted in her early days.The plot sounds like any other action thriller, with Yao (veteran HK actor Sam Hui, unfortunately, takes the leading role of Yao), an orphan who grows up with Yip (Cheung) in USSR (before it was named Russia) and falls in love together. However, Yao was captured by a mysterious man who leads a Japanese underground assassination squad named Eight Hundred Dragon. Yao was trained by a weirdo on skills of assassination and eventually, Yao became one of the top assassin. He was stuck in the war between Eight Hundred Dragon and their rival squad, and he must get himself out of the war.The plot is acceptable, and the first 20 min of the film is good. But after Yao was captured by the mysterious man, the whole film began to fail. It continues like crap and ends like crap. The editing was poorly done, leaving the audience with tonnes of question mark what has happened. Explosion scenes were poorly done, dialogs were laughable and tonnes of bullets were wasted just for the sake of using it.Crying Freeman is also the film where you see female stars such as Nina Li Chi and Lolita Lee, who are well known in HK for their big boobs in X-rated films, in their pre X-rated film days. Their role given were above average, but the direction leaves them unable to expand their roles further.In all, this is one of the worst production made in the 90's i've ever seen.
Dragon From Russia is an excellent movie to watch. The Story of Crying Freeman is on par with the manga it's self. I mean did you guys watch the same movie as I did? Mark Dacascos did a good job, but the likeness was really not there. Dean Shek did a good job in putting this film together. The action was good, the comedy was a little bit over the top, but then again so was the comedy in the anime.The only thing that was missing in this movie was Bai Ya Shan, the overly huge child minded woman, but then again who in the hell could play that part.For action and good story check this movie out. The average reviewers on here are just waiting to hate something anyway. See it for yourself and you'll know if you like it or not.Me................. I give it 8.9 out of 10, that is only because like I said, the comedy was alittle over the top. Other than that GREAT MOVIE.
'Dragon From Russia' Tells the Story of Yo an artist who is kidnapped while fleeing Russia with his Girlfriend and her family, He soon finds himself chained to a mysterious Martial Arts master and begins to teach him the ways of being an assassin.This action classic directed by the brilliant Clarence Fok is taken from the Manga comic book 'Crying Freeman' and is one of the best comic adaptations out there with scenes lifted directly from the pages of the comic itself.The cast is well put together Sam Hui handles himself well in the leas role of the Free Man while Maggie Cheung puts gives a touching performance as the woman he loves. Another interesting performance comes from Jet Li's wife Nina Li Chi who plays an assassin fighting along side Yo, which makes a refreshing change from her role in 'Tiger On The Beat' in which she receives a rather brutal ass kicking from Chow Yun Fat, but thats a different movie all together.But one thing which made this movie spectacular was Yuen Clan member Yuen Tak, who co-stars in the movie as both Yo's master with the rubber face and Yo's assistant.Each fight is expertly choreographed and exciting to watch, showing that each Yuen clan member has their own unique and energetic style.All in all a fun action film to watch especially if fans of the Crying Freeman comic would like to find something different to that of the western version starring Mark Decascos, which has to be said is a good flick as well.
Dragon from Russia is sort of a live action of Crying Freeman but very different than the french version!What struck me here was the action: there is a good amount of fights which were awesome, especially the climactic one!! They use wires in the fight scenes but they didn't distract me at all.(The Church scene is an instant classic!) As long as you don't expect action from Maggie Cheung, this movie will satisfy the average action lover!!........................................9/10
