Enter the Fat Dragon Parent Guide

Fallon Zhu (Donnie Yen) has it all: a successful career with the Hong Kong police, a strong background in martial arts, and a beautiful fiancée, Chloe (Niki Chow), who works in television. But after his attempt to stop a bank robbery backfires on him, Fallon finds himself with a broken leg, reassigned to desk work, and without a fiancée. The boredom and inactivity take their toll, and the previously shredded supercop soon packs on some pounds. His opportunity for redemption comes when his boss assigns him to oversee a prisoner extradition to Japan…but things in Tokyo are more complicated than he thought, and his skills will be put to the test.

Action movies produced in Hong Kong have a great reputation for amazing stunt work, thanks in large part to stunt performers and directors like Bruce Lee, Donnie Yen, and Jackie Chan. Their dedication to performing real stunts always makes the action shine. The cost is typically the script – action comedies aren’t famed for their brilliant screenwriting, and this is no exception. Characters verge on a physically impossible single dimension, which can make some of the scenes almost painful. Thankfully, Donnie Yen has enough charisma to carry you through – usually. But no one is watching this movie for the script, and the action is fun and fast-paced. There are also references to other Donnie Yen classics – particularly Sha Po Lang (2005), so fans of the genre have a lot to dig into.

Given the modern political climate, one of my biggest issues with the film is the remarkably sunny depiction of the Hong Kong Police – a force which has been heavily documented in recent years brutally abusing pro-democracy protestors and cracking down on political dissent. If you’ve watched the news recently, you might find it hard to accept that these are now “the good guys”.

This isn’t a great kids movie, but teenagers will have a fun time with the over-the-top martial arts action and silly plot. There aren’t too many parental concerns, apart from the violence. The profanity is largely mild (and almost entirely in either Mandarin or Japanese), which is always a nice surprise in an action movie, and the drug use is inadvertent. There is a fair amount of drinking, but part of that is cultural. My least favorite issue is a prolonged action sequence in which a naked man is chased around on the streets of Tokyo – if I had wanted to see that much male buttock, I would have hung around the change room at the YMCA. While this may not be star-studded family entertainment, it is perfectly brainless action fun, and if that’s what you’re looking for, then maybe you too should enter the lair of the Fat Dragon.