With his role as the main villain in Richard Donner's fourth installment in the popular “Lethal Weapon”-series, Jet Li entered a new era in his career as he would star in many international productions in the years to come. Apart from the new level of fame he received with mainstream audiences who would get to see him in such features like “Cradle 2 the Grave”, “Romeo Must Die” and “Unleashed”, it also gave Li the opportunity to work with actors and directors outside of Hong Kong, the most notable of which would be French filmmaker and producer Luc Besson, whose projects like “Leon: The Professional” and “La Femme Nikita” had gained him a reputation among cinephiles and especially fans of the action genre. Their first collaboration called “Kiss of the Dragon”, produced by Besson and directed by Chris Nahon, was a blend of martial arts and action, which, in many ways, defined a change to the kind of features the actor was famous for in his home country.
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Jet Li plays Liu Siu-jian, a Chinese undercover agent, whose superiors have sent him to France to supervise the arrest of a mob boss who has been smuggling heroin between Europe and Asia. Liu's first encounter with Inspector Jean Pierre Richard (Tchéky Karyo) is anything but friendly, as the French investigator regards Liu's presence as an interference with his work. However, as the mob boss is assassinated, Siu-jian soon finds out about the policeman's true colors as he tries to frame the Chinese with the murder. Fortunately, Liu manages to get away from the crime scene and even steals a tape showing how the crime really took place, and which can prove his innocence.
While he contemplates his next move, Liu meets Jessica (Bridget Fonda), a prostitute working for Richard who has kidnapped her daughter. After his plan of contacting his superiors backfires, causing more damage and makes him look even more like a murder suspect, Liu realizes Jessica has been in the hotel room when the mob boss was assassinated, and can thus prove his innocence. However, before she agrees to confess, she wants him to save her daughter.
Given the possibilities of joining forces and working together, Jet Li and Luc Besson reportedly did not waste time and started coming up with ideas for a potential project right away. According to Li, it took less than three weeks after their initial meeting, when he had a script and production was underway, with Besson hiring Nahon to helm the project, which would also be his first major feature. Considering this background, it may explain why “Kiss of the Dragon” is such a mixed bag, offering some rather impressive scenes and action pieces, but also cardboard, forgettable characters and a rather generic plot which loosely connects the various fight scenes.
Within the context of his projects in the early 2000s, “Kiss of the Dragon” may be regarded as something of a precursor to “Cradle 2 the Grave” or “Romeo Must Die”. Similar to his characters in the aforementioned feature, Li plays the outsider, a character notable for his cultural “otherness”, but at the same time one who could just as easily blend in with the crowd. While the seriousness of a character like Liu Siu-jian is certainly interesting, compared to the occasional quirkiness of the kind of roles he played in his Hong Kong features, he is also quite bland and gives Li very little chance to show his acting abilities. At the same time, however, this level of seriousness makes the fights more realistic, which was one of the aims Li and Besson had in mind and which would have worked if they had stayed away from the silly rap music in those scenes.
Aside from Li, perhaps only Tchéky Karyo stands out in what may be considered a more exaggerated version of the Gary Oldman-character in “Leon: The Professional”. Karyo, whose tendency to overdo it, especially when given a villain to play, has some quite hilarious scenes in “Kiss of the Dragon”, at times bordering on being cartoonish.
“Kiss of the Dragon” is in many ways typical for the kind of action/ martial arts-cinema Jet Li came to be known for in the early 2000s. It is a feature noteworthy for its fight choreographies, while not offering much else which a fan of the genre has not seen before, and quite frankly better executed.
