That line as uttered by Richard the baddie after Jet Li's character told him he had been *Kissed* by the dragon was an instant classic!! Tcheky Karyo was a brilliant over the top villain!

Now that's out of the way, My thoughts on the movie... First the story, It was above average for an action film, but I wont dwell on that because let's face it, No one goes to an action/martial arts film solely for the story. With that in mind, I will focus my comments on the action and martial arts sequences.

On the whole, the movie had a dark sort of feel toward it and thus not as upbeat as Jet's previous Hollywood outing, " Romeo must die ". The fight scenes were a welcome change to the wirefu seen in *Romeo must Die* and *Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon* and were grounded in reality, with Jet using various martial arts techniques modified for street fighting.

This movie in terms of fighting would have been first rate if it weren't for the shoddy camera work and editing during most of the fights.

Western directors MUST learn to pull back the camera and stop using those fast cut MTV style editing when it comes to shooting martial arts fight sequences. The first rule of shooting a martial arts scene,especially when the actor is also a talented martial artist, is to pull the camera back and shoot it with a wide angle with longer takes and not to do so many close ups with excessively fast cutting of scenes to the point where the whole body cannot be seen and consequently the FUlL power, grace and the execution of the technique is lost to the audience.

But even with this flaw, the fight scenes still manage to be very entertaining, My personal favourites are The Dojo fight (where Jet utilises Fillipino Escrima stick fighting) and the fight with the 2 albino twins where Jet outnumbered and outsized by his opponents, uses his environment and his speed to defeat them. Those two fights in particular even though they are choreographed, look very REAL and are as hardcore as they come!

Overall, Kiss of the Dragon is a decent action film with good action set pieces but due to the haphazard editing, The film cannot be used as a true showcase of Jet's Skill. One would have to go back to his earlier work in Hong Kong for that.