This is another Kung Fu comedy from the early 80’s, this time with the lovable Jackie Chan as Dragon Ho. This film was originally intended to be a sequel to The Young Master – to be called ‘Young Master in Love’.
In the similar style to Jackie’s portrayal of Wong Fei Hung in Drunken Master, Jackie plays a young defiant teenager named Dragon, who does his very best to deceive his father and skip his studies for more amusing ventures – like chasing chicks.
Dragon and his best buddy head out on the town (sounds more exciting than it is, it’ day time and its just the markets) and both have their eyes set on a local girl and start competing for her attention.
While all of this is happening a group of men are planning to sell some valuable and stolen Chinese artifacts for top dollar. These artifacts are considered an important part of the Chinese heritage so one of the men starts to plot to get out of the group. Naturally, when thegroup discover this then try to kill him.
The man escapes and the group of men head out to find him, meanwhile Dragon happens to be in the same field this man is hiding and gets temporarily caught up with the men before they head off.
So Dragon seems to get caught up in situation after situation and eventually ends up standing against the men, trying his best to protect his friends and the artifacts.
More Comedy than Kung Fu
This film seems to be a bit of a lean towards Jackies roles in his later films where he is simply living a normal life and gets caught up with some villains and ends up making a stand. There’s no master he turns to in order to enhance his style, he simply uses what he’s always known to fight his way out of trouble.
Dragon’s main focus is the girl, he even attaches a note to a kite which just happens to land in the villains base of operations – naturally he goes in to get it back and ends up in trouble – coincidentally there’s already someone their spying on the group before Dragon bumbles on in and ruins things.
It’s all pretty knee deep and is just about entertainment. No messages on martial arts, kung fu or life – it’s just a mischievous trouble maker /teenager who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Action and Martial Arts?
There isn’t a hell of a lot of fighting until the end of the film, but that final fight is packed with Jackie’s amazing ability to duck in an out of tight spots, around and above his environment and simply out move his opponents. It’s the usual stuff – awesome as always.
Most of the film is focused on the plot, with a couple of sporting events. One which invovled a hacky sack style game where players kick around a shuttlecock in a football style match which was pretty cool. The choreography and difficulty of shooting such a sequence makes it interesting to watch.
Overall though, it’s what you’d expect from Jackie. The sporting events are the most unique parts of the movie, with the fights being very well done also but nothing really new.
Overall?
It’s a good Jackie Chan movie, but really somehwere in the middle and far from one of his best. Check it out if your a bit of Jackie Chan fanatic who must see all of his movies, otherwise he has many other great ones which are much better in overall quality.
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
Dragon Lord
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Dragon Lord [DVD]
Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
Jackie Chan – The Dynamic Collection – 15-DVD Box Set 
