Line #14 Film/KissOfTheDragon


1	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/139f00258917517753bdfb8459319a69.jpg]]
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3	''Kiss of the Dragon'' is a 2001 [[MartialArtsMovie martial arts action film]] starring Creator/JetLi, written by Creator/LucBesson and directed by Chris Nahon.
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5	Liu Jian (Li), a Chinese intelligence officer, comes to [[GayParee Paris]] to help the vice squad apprehend Chinese drug lord Mr. Big (Ric Young) and his unknown French connection. He joins forces with French police official Jean-Pierre Richard (Creator/TchekyKaryo) in order to do it. Alas, it turns out that Richard is Big's connection, and that Richard is planning to murder Big. When Jian discovers, tries and fails to stop this, Richard frames him for the murder. Jian is able to escape with a tape that proves his innocence, but he loses it soon after. Just when it seems he has nowhere to turn, he meets Jessica (Creator/BridgetFonda), a HookerWithAHeartOfGold whom Richard has forced into prostitution and heroin-addiction, and who was present at the site of Big's murder and thus can prove Jian's innocence. Alas, [[IHaveYourWife Richard also has Jessica's daughter under his thumb in an orphanage]], and she refuses to help until Jian gets her. Jian sets off to do it, evading Richard's mooks and seeking to slay him at the same time.
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7	Li made the film as a result of fans requesting more realistic fight scenes following ''Film/RomeoMustDie''. Consequently, only two scenes required CGI enhancement (the flames from the grenade explosion and the billiard ball after Li's character kicks it) and only one scene involved wire work (Cyril Raffaelli's 1 1/4 somersault, which [[RealityIsUnrealistic he could do on his own]], but which went too fast for the camera and therefore required wires to slow down).
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9	Notably, ''Kiss of the Dragon'' was originally going to become the first R-rated film to stream on Creator/DisneyPlus in the United States, but the decision was reversed, instead streaming on Disney+ in Canada; that honor instead went to the trio of ''Film/{{Deadpool\|2016}}'', ''Film/{{Logan}}'', and ''Film/Deadpool2''.
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11	----
12	!!This film provides examples of:
13	* TheAce: Jian was promoted five times and received several medals and recommendations for his work. He graduated at the top of the class and is a trained martial artist OneManArmy.
14	* TheAggressiveDrugDealer: In [[HateSink yet another]] of his many [[KickTheDog loathful actions]] through the film, when Jessica (who has been forced into prostituion by Richard) tries to make a stand at one point and ask him to let her go and give her back her daughter, Richard wrestles her to his desk, holds her down, injects her with a fresh dose of cocaine, and tosses her out onto the street to continue her rounds.
15	* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: Averted. The twin brothers are incredibly similar, but one of them is slim and lean while the other is much taller and bigger. Actually, aside from the credits and casting names, they are never stated to be ''twin'' brothers, but in case they are not, they have a StrongFamilyResemblance.
16	* AssholeVictim: Mr. Big is an extremely nasty Triad leader and in a different film he would be BigBad material. Instead, the plot quickly establishes Inspector Richard [[EvilerThanThou as the more dangerous criminal]] and Jian doesn't care about how Richard murdered the criminal he had been pursuing for a long time beyond the fact that [[ClearMyName Jian got framed for it]].
17	** Also [[spoiler:Richard himself, after all the horrible things he's done, when Jian kills him with the technique in the title.]]
18	* AwesomenessByAnalysis: During the fight with the twins, Liu figures the shorter one relies heavily on roundhouse and spinning kicks, and lures him into a narrow corridor full of tables, where his feet constantly get caught and leave him open to get hit more.
19	* AxCrazy: Like [[Film/TheProfessional Norman Stansfield]] before him, Inspector Richard is a volatile nutcase [[HairTriggerTemper who frequently and readily loses his temper]] and isn't afraid to use violence to get what he wants.
20	* BadBoss: Inspector Richard. No need to make a long list what he's done, so here's a short version: Other than being the head of local Interpol branch, and running a prostitution ring, he makes sure to keep them addicted and keeps the daughter of one in an orphanage to prevent her from leaving. He gets his own people killed to protect himself. And those he doesn't kill, he blackmails, and he sets up murders.
21	* BadCopIncompetentCop: Inspector Richard's whole department seems to be either in on his own schemes, or too incompetent to realize he's running a [[HookersandBlow drug and prostitution ring]] right out of their office.
22	** However Jian's own force (intelligence agents with police authority) seems to be the opposite, committed to upholding the law and following law enforcement procedures, and the Chinese liaisons sent to investigate Richard's accusations after he frames Jian aren't fooled by Richard's claims.
23	* TheBadGuysAreCops: Partially used and partially subverted, this is true of Richard and probably much of the division he leads, but not of Jian's force back in China, who behave professionally and follow proper guidelines.
24	* BewareTheQuietOnes: Jian is not one who minces words much, but he retaliates brutally against those who try to kill him or those he cares about.
25	* BlatantLies:
26	** After Richard killed the drug boss and the prostitute that stabbed the drug boss, he tries to a [[FrameUp frame Jian]] by using Jian's own gun (with his fingerprints) and setting it up like Jian was a DirtyCop. Jian's boss, Chen, doesn't believe it for a second.
27	** When asked by Jessica what Jian's work is, he responds that he's selling food. She then mentions that this food [[DeadpanSnarker must be extremely dangerous,]] considering the deep cut in his arm that she had to sew just a moment earlier.
28	* BringIt: Played with. After the smaller brother goads Jian into attacking with this, to his advantage, Jian turns it back on him to gain the upper hand. The fight scene grinds to a halt as both fighters realize they're better off where they are. The result could be subtitled "Bring it!" "No, ''you'' bring it!" "No, you!" The brother eventually gives in and gets his ass kicked, so he does it again to get Jian to fight on his terms once more (and still loses).
29	* CelibateHero: Jian, to the point that Jessica [[MistakenForGay wonders if he is gay,]] much to his annoyance.
30	* ChekhovsGun: When Jian is being searched early in the film for weapons being carried, [[spoiler: he is found to have a bunch of acupuncture needles around his wrist, which are ignored as Jian is supposed to be an expert in acupuncture for healing. It turns out the needles ''are'' weapons for him, and he uses one of them in the climactic fight against Richard to save Jessica's young daughter Isabel, using the technique in the film's title.]]
31	* ClearMyName: Richard frames Jian for the murder of the man he had been sent to arrest. The rest of the film is Jian trying to expose Richard.
32	* CombatPragmatist: As Jian can't use his gun in most fights, he resorts to his fists and [[ImprovisedWeapon anything else he can find,]] from an iron to a billiard ball to the head.
33	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler:Richard suffers from one. Jian in the finale hits him with a needle at a pressure point, the kiss of the dragon, to cause an aneurysm. Richard dies a painful death with blood shooting from his mouth, eyes, ears and nose.]]
34	**This goes to couple of Richard mooks who met painful fate as well.
35	* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: The titular "Kiss of the Dragon" is mentioned by Jian to be one of these in his ToThePain InfoDump [[spoiler:right after subjecting Richard to it]]. On the other hand, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
36	* DirtyCop: Richard, the twin brothers and probably his entire department. He's got a HookersAndBlow operation on the side.
37	* TheDragon: Two of them, a pair of blonde twins, who give Jian his last big martial arts fight before taking on Richard.
38	* DueToTheDead: After Tai was gunned down, Jian brings his corpse to a church and he holds a funeral for him.
39	* EntendreFailure: Jessica offers a favor to Jian for being kind to her, but sex isn't something that registers for him.
40	* FatalFlaw: According to "Uncle" Tai, four agents came to Paris before Jian. They all died because they were too {{pride}}ful and acted too rashly.
41	%% * GayParee
42	* GiantMook: A ScaryBlackMan henchman tries to smush Jian after he attacks a pimp who was abusing Jessica. The larger of the two brothers at the police station also qualifies.
43	* GroinAttack:
44	** Blond [[GiantMook Giant Mook]]. Twice.
45	** A mook gets shot in the junk during the boat scene.
46	* GunsAkimbo: The member of Richard's gang posing as an airline pilot whips out two submachine guns and lays waste to the hotel lobby as Jian tries to make his escape.
47	* HairTriggerTemper: Inspector Richard screams profanities at people in practically every scene, so much so that one wonders how he never blows his cover.
48	* HateSink: Richard with a long line of awful things that firmly establish him as a nasty psychopath. In addition to frequent murders, public outbursts, framing Jian, forcing Jessica into prostitution, abducting and threatening a little girl (Jessica's pre-teen daughter Isabel), addicting Jessica to heroin, using people under his command as human shields and basically running an illegal drug trade, he does all this by ''abusing the public trust'' in a position as law enforcement.
49	* HiddenSupplies: At one point, Liu Jian has to retrieve weapons and other supplies that his Chinese intelligence unit hid in storage lockers in a train station. When two cops standing by the lockers see what is in them, he immobilizes them with his kung fu acupuncture.
50	* HoistByHisOwnPetard:
51	** After Jian managed to piss Richard off with a kick in the face, Richard responds by trying to blow Jian up [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill with a hand grenade.]] Jian catches the grenade and then throws it right back into the sleeve of a mook, which almost kills Richard, if he hadn't reacted in time.
52	** The smaller brother's attempt to kick Jian with a backflip ends up being his death sentence, as Jian catches his legs and causes a NeckSnap.
53	* HookersAndBlow: The hookers brought to Big's hotel room bring some blow with them.
54	* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Jessica was forced into prostitution. She is really just an innocent woman that was dragged into a shitty life.
55	* HostageForMacGuffin: Defied by Jian. Richard tries to trade Jessica's daughter for the tapes of a murder. Jian has already turned the tapes in, and is now going to get the daughter.
56	* HostageSituation: Richard tries to play the card again face to face, and it's still defied. Jian points out that in the time it takes Richard to kill the girl, Jian will kill ''him''. Richard instead elects to shoot Jian, which goes even worse (if he had shot the girl, he'd at least have spite to his name, all he managed instead was a minor wound).
57	* IHaveYourWife: Richard holds the daughter hostage.
58	* ImplacableMan: The taller of the twins frequently [[NoSell shrugs off]] attacks.
59	* ImprovisedWeapon:
60	** Among other things, Jian beats up mooks with a scooter, a broom, and with [[DualWielding dual]] ''irons''.
61	** He also kills a guy with ''chopsticks'' to the throat.
62	* InvincibleHero: Jian takes out the entire police station and by the end of it only has a cut-up hand from some glass and a bullet in his shoulder, which only happened after he had taken out everyone else.
63	* ItOnlyWorksOnce: During their fight, Jian grabs the smaller brother's foot and tries to throw him onto his back. The smaller brother instead backflips and kicks Jian in the chest. When they wind up in the same position, Jian rushes forward and grabs the brother's legs, snapping his neck in a pro wrestling-inspired ganso bomb when he hits the ground.
64	* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:The NeckSnap-happy brothers both die by the same.]]
65	* KickTheDog: Richard gets several of these, including having his thugs working some poor guy over when Jian walks in to do business with him, murdering Big and framing Jian for it, and forcibly injecting Jessica with her "fix" of heroin before throwing her back on the street when she asks him to free her daughter so she can get out of the business.
66	* KnightInShiningArmor: Jian is one to Jessica. He (at first reluctantly) offered her shelter, food, protected her from her abusive pimp and promised to save her and her daughter. She offers him her body in return, but Jian is a CelibateHero. Any of her advances towards him are very gently rejected.
67	* LameComeback: Richard's comeback to the TitleDrop is "kiss my ass", which would be lame even if he weren't completely paralyzed. Jian just smiles at his lame comeback.
68	* LameLastWords: After everything he has roared out throughout the film with the bombastic aplomb Creator/TchekyKaryo can wield, the last thing Richard says (as he is beginning to succumb to the [[TitleDrop Kiss of the Dragon]] pressure point) is "kiss my ass". And it takes him a lot of effort to whisper it out. Jian shrugs and leaves him to his fate.
69	* MajorInjuryUnderreaction: Jian suffers two major wounds; once his arm is sliced open and once he is shot in the shoulder. He doesn't really show much of a reaction in either case.
70	* MaliciousMisnaming: Richard gives no attempt at pronouncing Jian's name and just refers to him as Johnny. At the end, Jian's final words to Richard are, "My name is not Johnny."
71	* MarriedToTheJob: Jian doesn't have any relationships, he's simply focused on his job.
72	* MinorInjuryOverreaction: Apparently, in Richard's world, the appropriate response to getting your nose broken is to throw a grenade at the one responsible.
73	* MookChivalry: Averted, as the second wave of martial artists in the police dojo actually try to attack Liu Jian at once. However, after he tosses one of the first wave against the group, their formation is broken and he curbstomps his way among them in the trope's old iteration.
74	* NeckSnap: The brothers are fond of this, with the bigger one {{Neck Lift}}ing the victim so the smaller one can jump up and break their neck with a hook kick. [[spoiler:Unsurprisingly, both die this way.]]
75	* NoNameGiven: According to promotional materials, the twins' names are Victor (the smaller) and Igor (the bigger), but only the latter's gets mentioned on the film, and only once.
76	* TheNotLoveInterest: There is a small amount of UST between Jessica and Jian, but he doesn't seem interested in her for the most part.
77	* ObviouslyEvil: Inspector Richard really makes no damn attempt to look like a good guy in the few minutes of screen time he is pretending to be one. When Jian first meets him, you knew he was the BigBad.
78	* OhCrap: Jian gets his first when he opens the train station locker with supplies smuggled in by his government should he need them on his mission.... right in front of two police officers.
79	** Jian gets another one when he barricades a door in the police station and turns around to see he has sealed himself inside a dojo full of karate black belts with sparring sticks.
80	** Richard gets his when he realizes Jian is coming for him at the police station.
81	* OneManArmy: Jian plows through an entire police station, which happens to have a hand-to-hand combat course in session.
82	* OutWithABang: A killer prostitute (specifically [[spoiler:an assassin targeting a specific victim]]) asks her victim things like "Do you want to go to heaven?" and "Are you ready to go to heaven?" as she's riding him to (his) orgasm. He asks her to take him there, [[spoiler:in no frame of mind to notice just how long and sharp the hairpins she's holding are.]] Mortality ensues.
83	* RightHandCat: Richard has a pet turtle that he keeps in a drawer in his desk.
84	* RuthlessForeignGangsters: Averted with Big. He's painted as a pretty ruthless Triad big-shot, but Richard shows himself to be the more vile bastard very early in the film, taking over as the ''real'' BigBad.
85	* SequentialSymptomSyndrome: Jian uses kung fu acupuncture to make a guy's head explode. He describes the physical symptoms as the man stands paralyzed.
86	* SilentAntagonist: Aside from some grunts (and roars, in the bigger one's case), the twin brothers never talk.
87	* SoftGlass: Zig-zagged. The brothers are shown to kick their way through the glass with reckless abandon (likely thanks to wear practical boots), but both Jian and the bigger brother slice up their hands when they accidentally grab surfaces covered in it.
88	* StealthPun: The BigBad, who basically goes out of his way to be an asshole at every opportunity, is named Inspector Richard. No one makes the obvious connection.
89	* SwissArmyWeapon: Jian's needles are used for all sorts of things; from putting someone to sleep to getting off handcuffs to [[spoiler:causing an aneurysm with the kiss of the dragon]].
90	* TranquilFury: After Jessica's daughter was abducted and held hostage by Richard, Jian walks into the police station alone to free her [[spoiler:and kill Richard]].
91	* TrivialTitle: The "Kiss of the Dragon" is the name of the pressure point attack Jian uses to [[spoiler:kill off Richard]]. It is not foreshadowed in any way through the film and overall makes no difference.
92	* UnresolvedSexualTension: Jessica casually asks in their first real conversation if Jian is interested in marrying a former addict and single mother who can sew and cook, and likes Chinese food. She claims that she was just joking, but considering her shitty life, she may just be desperate to find any possible way out of it and run away. After Jian saved her life, she mentions how he has become the first person in a long time that she has begun to trust again. Jian shows a lot of sympathy towards Jessica in return, even defending her from her physically abusive pimp, which unfortunately leads to Tai's death.
93	* UnstoppableRage: [[spoiler:After the smaller brother is killed by Jian, his brother loses his cool and mercilessly attacks. While Jian at first seems to be losing, he eventually punishes the openings that now show up and quickly dispatches his opponent.]]
94	* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Inspector Richard is well-known to international law enforcement as an exemplary member of the French police.
95	* VillainousFriendship: Richard towards Max the pimp. Unlike the rest of his henchmen which he considers just pawns, Max is the only one Richard sees more like a friend. [[spoiler: He appears quite sad when he dies.]]
96	* {{Workaholic}}: Jian's job is all he knows; Jessica is stunned that he's so blocked out from the outside world that he doesn't know who Santa Claus is. Of course, he is Chinese and might not be acquainted with Western culture, but still.
97	* WouldHurtAChild: Inspector Richard, when he takes Jessica's young daughter Isabel hostage and prepares to kill her, as bait to lure Jian into a trap.
98	* WouldntHitAGirl: Implied to be the case with Jian. He feels extremely uncomfortable when Jessica's pimp hits her (eventually jumping to her defense) and even apologizes for lightly slapping her, after she passed out on the toilet.
99	* WrestlerInAllOfUs: Jian kills the smaller brother with a ganso bomb.
100	* YouAreAlreadyDead: The [[TitleDrop film's title refers to]] a technique in which an acupuncture needle is stabbed into a PressurePoint in someone's neck, causing all the blood to flow to the head thus causing aneurysm. Jian does it to Richard in the climax.
101	* YouJustToldMe: In order to get Richard's location in the building, Jian asks him to look out the window. Richard thinks Jian already knows, thus betraying himself when he complies.

Context Film / KissOfTheDragon