The Last Dragon

The_Last_Dragon_DVD_review

There is this kid that is different from everyone else. Everyone is talking Jive and this guy is a kung fu student and acts like a robot. He then saves a girl from a gang because he can channel Bruce Lee. He also wears a real Bruce Lee jump suit. Complete with sweat, pubes and skids. His character name was also Bruce Leroy. Get it? Bruce Lee…roy? OK, I’ll move on. The gang comes after him and destroys his family business, he goes after the gang and there is a big fight.

So 1985, whats going on? MTV, Reagan, Berlin wall and tons of Kung Fu on VHS. This is why I think this movie was made. It had a good martial arts guy that is also black. Every other black actor movie was like Beverly Hills Cop or Richard Prior or Bill Cosby.

The bad guy would later also inspire the image of Busta Rhymes.

Here are some parts I recall:

  • The McGuffin of this movie is a pretty singer named “Vanity”. Her vanity name is vanity. You cant get more meta than that. In 1985 anyways. And something bad happens to her whenever black Bruce Lee is around.
  • There is a Mr Miyagi character that teaches Leroy the ways of the kung fu. He was probably drunk as most scenes with him look like he needs to leave the room to take a piss. He gives Leroy a fancy belt and tells him that it has a medallion (the fancy belt buckle) would give him super power. Queue: “oh it wasn’t the external thing and you had it in you all along.”
  • There were three comic characters that seemed to work for not-Busta-Rhymes. They where named “SUM DUM GOY”. This reminds me of MH370… Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, Pull Up Nao and the other fake name from a stupid joke.
  • They knock off the Bruce Lee slow motion frames of him moving his hands to look like duplicate hands.

We did manage to find parallels between this movie and Lord of the Rings. We also noticed the deluxe cheese in the dialogue which triggered our singing responses.

It’s 15 minutes longer than it needs to be but overall, its an entertaining movie. More schlocky than stupid. Watch it. Its good fun.