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Matt Glasby

This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions.
At the turn of the millennium, Jet Li Lianjie tried everything he could to crack the international market.
The martial arts star took on the ageing Riggs and Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon 4, and tackled Shakespeare (of a sort) in Romeo Must Die. But nothing brought him the combination of critical and commercial success he had enjoyed back home in Hong Kong.
His fourth attempt, the 2001 action flick Kiss of the Dragon, proved to be one of his best English-language efforts. Even then, however, things did not quite go to plan.


Although technically a French film, with a French director, Chris Nahon, and producer, Luc Besson, the film was actually an excellent example of the kind of stateless cinema that made Besson’s name – see Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element and Unleashed (also starring Li).
Despite being set in a Paris where everyone speaks English, the main language is ultra-violence, which knows no borders. This is the kind of film where the characters aim for stealth, then when that fails, pull out massive twin submachine guns and start firing.
Typically for Besson, a controversial figure who has weathered multiple assault accusations, Kiss of the Dragon is both entertaining and extremely problematic.
Liu Jian (Li) is a Chinese agent sent to Paris for an operation headed by the corrupt Inspector Richard (Tchéky Karyo). It involves Chinese businessman Mr Big (Ric Yung) and prostitutes Aja (Laurence Ashley) and Jennifer (Bridget Fonda), but quickly descends into chaos.

Aja stabs Mr Big, then Richard shoots them both with Liu’s gun, framing him for the crimes. With the help of Jennifer and local contact Uncle Tai (Pink Panther star Burt Kwouk), Liu must clear his name before Richard and his police colleagues catch him.
Mostly this involves racing around Paris taking part in a series of crunching fight scenes choreographed by Hong Kong stalwart Corey Yuen Kwai, who has worked on everything from Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury to Lethal Weapon 4.
Swapping CGI and wirework for good old-fashioned acrobatics, the film’s action sequences are exciting and inventive.
During a fearsome fight in a hotel laundry room, Liu wields an iron as a weapon, pushes huge carts into people and throws one unlucky assailant into an industrial washer. Later, he storms the police station only to find himself in a room full of cadets – all practising martial arts.

Smooth one minute, seething the next, Richard makes for a memorable villain. And if Jennifer is underwritten and objectified – also typical for a Besson film – at least Fonda is a good enough performer to compensate.
But there is another troubling element: Li is commanding in the lead role and came up with the story himself, so it is saddening to see Liu’s race treated so reductively.
Richard calls him “Johnny” because he cannot – or, as it later transpires, will not – pronounce his name. And when he sees one of Liu’s colleagues on the mortuary slab, he remarks, “There’s a billion of them, do you think they’ll miss one or two?”
It is one thing for the characters to be racist, but quite another for the filmmakers. How else to explain a scene where Liu kills a henchman with chopsticks, or the fact he does not know who Santa Claus is?

There is also a sexlessness to him, which plays into a depressing Hollywood stereotype. “He has no wife, no children, his only dedication is to his work,” we are told. And we see him being openly terrified of Jennifer when she offers to pay him for his kindness with sex.
“I’m not your type, is that it?” she asks, offended. “I don’t have [a] type,” he tells her. Later, she asks him if he has ever been with a prostitute. When he says no, she persists, “Are you gay?”
With this combination of violence, sexual frankness and a less-than-flattering view of officialdom, it is no wonder the Chinese government banned the film, despite the fact it was a box office success elsewhere in the world.
Still, it must have been incredibly frustrating for Li, who had given it his all.
“Films don’t always have to be realistic,” he complained on his website. “Typically, action films have good and bad characters. If gangsters [which he played in Romeo Must Die] aren’t appropriate and police officers aren’t appropriate, then what type of character can there be that wouldn’t start an argument? It leaves only the ancient Chinese stories to be produced.”

Li’s next move was telling.
Instead of picking another English-language action film, he headed home to make something the Chinese government would most certainly approve of. That film? Zhang Yimou’s all-conquering wuxia flick, Hero.
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Jet Li carries Bridget Fonda in a still from Kiss of the Dragon (2001), a popular film around the world that was banned in China. Photo: SCMP

Jet Li in a still from Kiss of the Dragon. Photo: SCMP

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Li (left) in a still from Kiss of the Dragon. Photo: SCMP

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Kiss of the Dragon was a box office success in 2001, but its racial stereotyping, violence and sexual frankness caused it problems in China


Kiss of the Dragon was a box office success in 2001, but its racial stereotyping, violence and sexual frankness caused it problems in China.


Why Jet Li’s Kiss of the Dragon was banned in China despite being a global hit

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Kiss of the Dragon was a box office success in 2001, but its racial stereotyping, violence and sexual frankness caused it problems in China

Kiss of the Dragon was a box office success in 2001, but its racial stereotyping, violence and sexual frankness caused it problems in China