A cop is assigned to a case of escorting a criminal to Japan while dealing with relationship problems, and his enormous change in appearance as a result of being dumped.
I admit I’m not well-versed in the Chinese blockbuster realm. I’m a total novice and my knowledge of Donnie Yen doesn’t extend far past the American films he made so I’m a total noobie at this. All that being said: What the hell did I just watch? “Enter the Fat Dragon” feels like a bizarre remake of “Rush Hour 3” but one that was dictated to a screenwriter after being interpreted by one of this movie’s very characters. Obviously this movie is sort of a child’s summer blockbuster with fart jokes and wild fights/stunts. The whole thing rests on the idea: What if put Donnie Yen in a convincing fat suit? I admit this thing is as hokey as it gets but looking past all the flair there exists very real political messaging in this movie that’s easy for a novice like me to spot because it’s so blatantly obvious.
Let’s start with this: Donnie Yen is a master of choreography and fighting. Yes? We can all acknowledge that. This movie essentially hangs its hat on that concept. Even in a fat suit, Donnie Yen delivers on badass kicks, flips, and even parkour that, when filmed properly, really entices the viewer. The camera wastes some of his talent by cutting so rapidly around his stunts and adding so much fighting together you’re left with little time to appreciate it. By diminishing its most basic element this whole movie becomes a tougher pill to swallow.
The fat suit doesn’t even seem to slow Yen down. The movie takes great pains not to dunk on overweight people and lets Donnie do what he does best so it feels like a moot point It could be “Enter the Four-Fingered Dragon” for all I care as the fat element doesn’t really play except for the occasional conversation about it. It’s a never-used gimmick which probably cost production a ton of time and money to put Donnie Yen in a convincing fat suit every day for production.
I have to say: Chinese filmmaking can feel downright bonkers at times. Whip pans, speed zooms and even poorly edited slow-mo all get their day in this movie. It’s like nothing is off limits: no trick or maneuver should be avoided as they all enhance a general ‘coolness’ of the action-comedy. It’s so zany that the whole thing feels like someone tried to film a cartoon exactly the way it looks but in real life. What’s wild to me is: those kinds of moves cost production money. That’s a lot of money on a CGI dog whose sole purpose is to get Yen to do stunts and take a bite out of Jing Wong’s ass.
Story-wise the film rebounds so much it’s hard to keep track of where we are. Because of its cartoonish speed, it bounces from heavy action to fart jokes in tenths of a second. Characters that seem important barely make fifteen whole minutes in the movie. Every character has a weird gimmick it seems and the villains are the badass or cool-looking characters. It’s a lampoonish world where it sort of feels like nothing matters as each emotional beat feels contrived the day of, on set, in reaction to the scene just before it. Nothing really sticks and so I can’t really say I rooted for or against anyone in this movie.
The thing I find most interesting about it is its messaging. Go with me a little bit here: Yen’s character, Fallon Zhu, is a supercop who loses his marriage and job to a destructive bank-heist-arrest. He then becomes fat and gets assigned the easiest possible job – escort a prisoner from Hong Kong to Tokyo. The movie takes great pains to paint Tokyo as a city of crime and aligns the police as so thoroughly corrupt that gangs can do anything they want and get away with it. The one character who is Chinese who works in Japan plays as a ditzy interpreter who complicates everything with her lazy interpreting. In a city of corrupt cops, it takes a rogue Chinese cop to bring the head of a criminal organization to justice THUS winning back the love of his life (I think) and proving it’s okay to be fat. All Japanese-windmill-dunking aside, the movie’s depiction of Chinese police forces in Hong Kong are as lazy, self-indulgent, cops compared to the extremely overworked Zhu. It even goes so far as to suggest that by not working extreme hours Zhu gains weight and becomes lethargic. Everyone should work extremely hard; well beyond the average amount of work hours and they will be powerful like Yen. It’s a baffling take, but one I resonate with as an American.
There’s plenty more to untangle but at the end of the day, I’m debating Chinese copaganda optics in a kitschy summer action-comedy. It’s zany, goofy, actiony, and weirdly messaged. Does it work? If I’m a nine-year-old child it does. I wouldn’t recommend a grown adult watch this. There’s nothing here for us. Yen’s amazing martial arts and stuntwork can be better seen in something else. For now, maybe I’ll keep wondering about China’s portrayal of a Hong Kong now under the Chinese government’s rule.
Available on Blu-ray™, DVD, and Digital July 14th from Well Go USA Entertainment
