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Heart of Dragon
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (29th March 2023). |
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The Film
 Tat (Drunken Master's Jackie Chan) is a stellar cop but he longs for the sea; unfortunately, he is the sole caregiver for his thirty-year-old brother Dodo (Eastern Condors' Sammo Hung, who also directed) who has the mental age of a child and often gets into trouble with his school-age friends. Tan's decision to join the merchant marines in the hopes of rising through the ranks and one day captaining his own ship alienates his girlfriend Jenny (A Better Tomorrow's Emily Chu) who realizes that he wants a babysitter for Dodowhiel Dodo's friends convince him that Tat is abandoning him. When Dodo goes out and tries to find a job, Tat discovers Dodo being exploited and humiliated and realizes that he cannot leave him behind and takes a job on the SWAT Team just as they are about to bust businessman Mr. Kim (The Big Boss' James Tien) as a diamond smuggler. Tat gives chase to Pang's supplier (Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain's Mang Hoi) who mistakes Dodo for a cop and drops the diamonds which Dodo and his buddy Heung (Young Bruce Lee's Lee Ka-Ho) hide, both swearing an oath of secrecy. Unfortunately, Heung's big brother and Tat's best friend Kenny (Police Story's Tai Bo) discovers the diamonds and his selfishness places Dodo in danger and Tat must break the law (with a little help from his own teammates) in order to save his brother. Promoted as a change of pace for Chan, Heart of Dragon is a rather uneven effort with its heart in the right place and Hung willing to play pathetic – he not only gets ridiculed by potential employers and beaten by restaurant workers who mistake him for an adult attempting to dine and dash but also emotionally abused by his own private tutor (Twin Dragons' Anthony Chan) – and Chan getting to stretch his acting muscles. The problem is that Hung and company know they must concede to the expectations of the audience for action – especially in the version prepared for Japanese co-producer/distributor Shochiku – and the set-pieces here feel more obligatory than in some of Chan's other attempts to diversify his filmography like Miracles (or even Dragons Forever). After an opening action scene, the film then spends most of the running time on drama and leaves the setup for the thriller half of the story until more than half-way through the film. The climactic action sequence, however, is well-worth seeing starting with a large-scale police chase and plenty of car and motorcycle stunts (and some accidental crashes left in the film) and culminating in a thrilling construction site fight played more for action than comedy (with Chan's SWAT officer impaling criminals with pickaxes and machetes). From Police Story onwards the same year, Chan maintained a better balance of humor and action (and even more successfully did drama with Crime Story), while Hung's subsequent directorial effort and star vehicle Eastern Condors was a more compelling merging of action and drama. The cast is filled out with Chan/Hung regulars like Lam Ching-Ying (The Prodigal Son), Yuen Wah (The Iceman Cometh), Corey Yuen (Righting Wrongs), Melvin Wong (Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars), Chung Fat (Millionaire's Express), Dick Wei (The Seventh Curse), and Wu Ma (A Chinese Ghost Story). Future director Fruit Chan (Dumplings) has a small role and worked behind the camera as Hung's co-director. 
Video
Unreleased theatrically in the United States – and released directly to VHS in the U.K. first under its Japanese title "The First Mission" and then as "Heart of the Dragon", Heart of Dragon first came to the U.S. as a Tai Seng laserdisc from a PAL-converted master with Cantonese and English tracks (although the subtitles were burned into the video) followed by a Tai Seng DVD in 2000 featuring a non-anamorphic master and Cantonese and Mandarin audio. Fortune Star's anamorphic remaster was subsequently released on DVD by Fox in 2003 with Cantonese and English DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks as well as two deleted fight scenes which were included in the aforementioned Japanese version of the film. The film made its Blu-ray bow in Japan in 2011 in its extended Japanese cut. While that version was sourced from a genuine HD master, the 2013 Hong Kong Blu-ray was unfortunately an upscale of the Fortune Star master while the German Blu-ray utilized the Japanese master for its feature presentation and recreation of the shorter German cut.  We do not know what the source was for the Scandinavian Blu-ray from 2020 – which was barebones and only had an English dub – but the same year 88 Films in the U.K. debuted a lavish Blu-ray special edition featuring new 2K restorations of the Hong Kong and Japanese cuts with an array of audio options and a handful of archival extras. Arrow Video's US-only Region A-locked Blu-ray comes from the same masters of the Hong Kong cut (91:25) and Japanese cut (99:11), the latter extended by the aforementioned fight scenes – a fight between Tat and the criminal staff of a Methadone clinic and a parking lot battle between Tat and some thugs who were harassing waitress Jenny, as well as the aforementioned pickaxe bit during the climactic fight – which were shot for but cut from the Hong Kong and English export version because Hung believed they hurt the tone of the film. These were reinstated into the Japanese version of the film at the insistence of the Japanese distributors who marketed the film as an action film rather than a melodrama. The film looked a little hazy on DVD with some diffusing during the exterior day scenes and some grit during the optical credits, but here colors of the wardrobe pop – Chan is outfitted in a bright yellow suit in the middle of a jungle during training maneuvers – and the more moodily lit interior scenes look more considered in the use of light and shadow (particularly since veteran cinematographer Arthur Wong seems to want to pull as much emotion out of the blank faces of Chan and Hung during the more music-dominated dramatic pauses).
Audio
Arrow carries over most of the audio options of the 88 Films edition, with original mono Cantonese, Mandarin, and English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 tracks on the Hong Kong version while the Japanese cut features the Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track with the Japanese soundtrack and songs, a Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 with the Hong Kong cut soundtrack – which features only dialogue and effects during the parking lot fight scene rather than the Japanese musical accompaniment – as well as the classic English dub in DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 which defaults to the Cantonese track for the scenes exclusive to the Japanese cut. Dropped from the Arrow edition is an additional Cantonese track with the Hong Kong score that utilized the Japanese soundtrack only for the parking lot fight scene. Like the 88 Films edition, English subtitles are featured for the Cantonese tracks on both versions while Arrow adds an English SDH track for the English dub on both versions. 
Extras
Extras are virtually identical to the 88 Films disc with the addition of a new audio commentary by film historians Frank Djeng & FJ DeSanto on the extended Japanese cut in which they discuss the differences between the two cuts – noting that the fight scenes were cut from the Hong Kong version not filmed for the Japanese cut – and how the film was promoted in Japan as an action film and in Hong Kong as a drama (with the poster depicting Hung crying), and how the action-focused opening is a bit misleading yet serves as a precursor to Police Story. They discuss Hung's dedicated performance and how it subverts expectations since he does not fight back – his name Dodo is a reference to actress Carol 'Do Do' Cheng (Operation Condor) – as well as the contributions of cinematographer Wong, prolific screenwriter Barry Wong (Mr. Vampire), and Hung's and Chan's "little brother" Yuen Biao who had no onscreen role here but doubled for Chan and other stunt parts. The first two video extras shed some light into how the film was promoted in Japan by co-producer/distributor Shochiku as a "trademark action film from Jackie Chan" in spite of Hung and Chan elsewhere describing it as change of pace (Hung is even heard disingenuously claiming he is not fighting in the film because he can no longer keep up with the others). The first is "The First Mission: Pre-Release Event" (15:23) was originally used at a pre-release event screening at Shinjuku Shochiku in August 1985 while the other "The Making of The First Mission" (48:43) is a making-of piece from the same raw footage shot by a Japanese television crew during the making of the film. It of course focuses almost entirely on the stunt work and action scenes, revealing an accidental motorcycle crash that was kept in the film and a scene of a performer practicing a jump from a window and bouncing from a canopy to the cement below several times before overshooting the canopy during the first take and seriously injuring himself (requiring months of hospitalization).  Ported over from older DVD releases of the film are a series of interviews. actor Jackie Chan (9:27) stresses the fact that his is an actor as well as a martial artist and expresses his admiration for Hung as a director, while actor Rocky Lai (10:03) recalls the many injuries resulting from the film's grenade sequence (more from the stuntmen landing on each other on the padding and then stepping on each other getting back up). Two interviews on the 88 Films Blu-ray have been combined here into one with actor/director Sammo Hung (18:53) in which he recalls not liking the original script, stopping production after the first few days, and having a week to rewrite it. While it was a drama with Chan, neither Hung nor his character was originally in the film's first incarnation. More interesting is the interview with cinematographer Arthur Wong (15:10) who speaks of his admiration for American cinema and how being knowledgeable about it is an advantage since some directors talk of their visual ideas in terms of reference other films. He also discusses his visual scheme for the film, using largely static compositions for the film's drama and switching to handheld and mobile camera for the action scenes. The disc also includes alternate English credits (2:32) featuring "The First Mission" title card along with an image gallery of twenty-seven stills and a trailer gallery featuring the Hong Kong theatrical trailer (5:57), an English export trailer (1:44) under the title "Raging Force" (although Heart of Dragon remains as a subtitle beneath it while promotional materials show that the film was also marketed internationally under the Japanese title "The First Mission"), a Japanese theatrical trailer (2:38), and a pair of Japanese teasers (2:38), as well as the Fortune Star's re-release trailer (2:31). 
Packaging
The disc is housed with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Gilbey while the first pressing only includes an illustrated collectors' booklet featuring new writing by Dylan Cheung and David West (neither of which were supplied for review).
Overall
A change of pace for Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, Heart of Dragon allows them to stretch their dramatic muscles but both cuts remain thrilling even if their subsequent efforts found a better balance between drama and action.
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