KineticSeoul With a title like "Dragon" that has Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro in it. I was expecting some grand or epic martial arts movie, with lots of battles and fight sequences...That is what this movie is. So if your an audience member that is expecting a lot of fight sequences you might be disappointed. This movie is a bit of a slow burner that has a message. Which is about what is right, the law of the land or if humanity, empathy and redemption. And how sometimes your past can comeback to haunt you. The two main leads really work together as opposites that comes to an understanding. The story is nothing all that special and it has been done before, but I did like the execution and the direction of this movie. It's simple and yet it has enough to make it stand out for what it is. It's a forgettable movie, but it's still a good enough slow burner of a movie.6.5/10

SnoopyStyle It's 1917 Liu Village, China. Liu Jin-Xi (Donnie Yen) is a paper maker in the small town. One day, two violent criminals come to town and Liu Jin-Xi kills them. Everybody believes they were accidentally killed, but Detective Xu Bai-Jiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is convinced that Liu Jin-Xi is actually a kung fu master.The premise is reminiscent of 'A History of Violence', and gets its inspiration from Yu Wang's 'The One-Armed Swordsman' (1967). Yu Wang is also in this one. The story of the wife played by Wei Tang is amazingly compelling. The detective is also more than a simple policeman. He is a strict legalist. He doesn't bend. His convictions have a dark beginning, and a dark result. The character relationships are complicated.The action isn't the normal kung fu movie for the first half. For action fans, the second half has enough to satisfy. But it's not just a simple action thriller. This is a character study, and a Greek tragedy.

DeathToPop The movie starts out with Liu Jin-xi doing his job as a paper hanger in 1912 China. Working at a clients' store replacing the rice paper windows, he's at the wrong place at the wrong time as two criminals enter demanding money. Deciding to be more than just a bystander he helps and by luck kills his opponents or so it seems.Enter Xu Bai-jiu, a medical expert and detective who despises his own overgrown sense empathy to the point where controls it through acupuncture while treating his body after nearly being poisoned from an earlier case where he let a thief go out of pity. Here we are also introduced to his alter-ego, a darker part of him that he attributes to his near death experience or is it a madness he brought on himself through acupuncture?Xu Bai-jiu sees more going on than the others through examining the bodies of the criminals, clues at the crime scenes, and interviews with the townsfolk. Unfortunately this is where the movie falls apart. Instead of sticking to the noir genre of a (self)tortured detective with the film sets itself up as, it just becomes another over dramatic kung fu film that takes itself too seriously.

thermal_socks Wu Xia (aka Dragon aka Swordsmen) is reminiscent of those classic Shaw Brothers movies that combined brilliant martial arts choreography with compelling characters. The plot is influenced by John Wagner and Vince Locke's graphic novel "A History of Violence" but this is not a remake of Cronenberg's film. With plenty of twists and turns to keep the viewer entertained, Wu Xia is one of the best martial arts films of recent years. Donnie Yen (Hero, Ip Man, Once Upon A Time in China 2) is on top form as a multi-faceted hero with a past. There's a lot of CSI/Sherlock Holmes style narration as the detective, played by Takeshi Kaneshiro ( Red Cliff, Chungking Express, House of Flying Daggers) unravels the identity of the village hero with a past. The dynamic between the rigid detective (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and the reformed criminal turned small town hero (Donnie Yen) is reminiscent of Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean in Les Misrables. Wu Xia is beautifully shot and well acted with great martial arts scenes. For martial arts buffs, Jimmy Wang Yu, star of the 1967 Shaw Brothers classic The One-Armed Swordsman also stars in this movie. Wu Xia (aka Dragon aka Swordsmen) is definitely a movie to add to your Blu-ray/DVD collection.