Twin Dragons (1992)
Review by Chris Meadows Review Rating: 8 out of 10
Directed by Tsui Hark & Ringo Lam Produced by Teddy Robin Kwan
Starring Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Teddy Robin Kwan, Nina Chi Li, Philip Chan, etc.
MPAA: Unrated
Many people laud Jackie Chan's kung-fu fighting and stunt-performing abilities without realizing the true secret of his cinematic success. Martial artists and stuntmen are a dime a dozen, but what really sets Jackie Chan above the rest is his wonderful knack for physical comedy. He has few equals in that field, at least among those working today--Bruce Campbell and Jim Carrey are the only other names that come immediately to mind. And it is comedy, rather than fighting, that makes "Twin Dragons" worth watching.
The premise of "Twin Dragons" is that Jackie Chan plays both halves of a pair of twins who were accidentally separated at birth, grew up into entirely different people, and eventually run into and get confused for each other in Hong Kong. Sound familiar? The same basic idea was done by Van Damme in "Double Impact," which was also set in Hong Kong and made the year before...but whereas in "Double Impact" the point was to have two Van Dammes to show twice as much beefcake and kick twice as much butt at once, "Twin Dragons" plays up the comedy aspect of mistaken identities--in fact, one of the Jackie Chans can't fight at all.
After the opening, in which the twins are split, they grow up separately--the one who was lost becomes Boomer, a tough auto mechanic, road racer, and street hustler, while John Ma, the one who went with his parents to America, grows up to be a virtuoso piano player and orchestra conductor.
As the film begins, Boomer's friend Tyson (played by Teddy Robin Kwan, also the film's producer) falls for a karaoke singer named Barbara (Maggie Cheung). In pursuit of her, Boomer and Tyson bust up a party for a Triad (mob) figure, Brother Wing (Alfred Cheung). In lieu of breaking Boomer's leg, Wing challenges Boomer to a road race, with stakes of three hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars (about $33,000 US). When the twosome attempts to flee Hong Kong, they get into a boat chase with Wing's men which ends up critically injuring Wing.
Meanwhile, John Ma has come to Hong Kong for the first time since his family left, to conduct a concert, and is set up with a rather attractive female nurse, Tammy (Nina Li Chi), by Tammy's father, an old family friend. As fate would have it, the Ma twins _almost_ meet several times, confusing all those with whom they come into contact (including Tyson, a waiter, Tammy, Barbara, Tammy's ex-boyfriend Rocky, and each other), accidentally get switched with each other, meet, switch back and forth two more times, and get stuck in each other's roles when it comes time to conduct the concert and the mobsters have a job they need Boomer to do. In the end, they join forces to save Tyson from the mob brothers in a climactic kung-fu comedy battle.
Chan fans expecting the sort of back-to-back fighting action seen in "Double Impact" may be disappointed. This movie has only one fighting Chan in it, that being Boomer--when the thugs come after John Ma, he has to run away or get beaten up. However, the fight scenes where Boomer does his thing are everything we've come to expect from Jackie at his prime--constant motion, use of handy props as improvised weapons, and fast and furious action.
Chan fans shouldn't fret too much, though, because there _are_ two _comedic_ Chans in "Twin Dragons." As might be expected, each Jackie Chans is constantly being mistaken for the "other" Jackie, and neither one quite realizes what's going on at first. The funniest scene of the movie comes in John Ma's hotel suite, when Tammy unknowingly corners the two Jackie Chans in the bathroom and they have to convince her that there's only one of them...while taking a bath together. There is physical comedy, too: being twins, the brothers share sort of a psychic link. When John Ma is playing the piano, Boomer's hand twitches as though he were playing the piano, too. When Boomer is racing a speedboat, attempting to escape from Brother Wing's thugs, John Ma is jerked this way and that (disrupting their dinner in a fine restaurant) as Boomer tries to keep his balance.
The version of "Twin Dragons" that I saw was dubbed and pan-and-scanned, bought from Best Buy for under $5. While I personally prefer subtitled and letterboxed films, this one was nonetheless well worth the money. The voice acting was quite good, and Cam Clarke, one of my favorite voice actors, did a fine job of differentiating the two different Jackie Chans.
All in all, this very entertaining film gets a rating of 8 out of 10 from this reviewer.
An interesting side note: "Twin Dragons" was made as a charity project by the Hong Kong Director's Guild, and features cameo appearances by many reknowned Hong Kong directors. Most notably, John Woo is the priest on the left at the wedding, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam (the directors of "Twin Dragons") are two of the card-playing mechanics in the Mitsubishi testing facility, and Philip Chan (who played the police superintendent in Woo's "Hard-Boiled," and who, interestingly enough, also had a role in Van Damme's "Double Impact") is the hotel manager. Other Hong Kong directors, who will probably not be recognized by non-Hong Kong-cinemaphiles on this side of the Pacific, fill many of the film's other minor roles.
(This review is copyright 1998 by Christopher E. Meadows. Permission
granted for Usenet distribution and associated archival, including the
Internet Movie Database, but other distribution rights reserved to the
author.)
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