Century of the Dragon

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Century of the Dragon a 1999 film from Andy Lau and company. Looks like it was shot on video.

Here they take Infernal Affairs (rookie cop out of academy drops out and goes undercover a long time in triads, rising to be aide of one of the top bosses) with The Godfather (son of a triad boss who is crippled in hospital takes over for him and proves even more ruthless) and Godfather 3 (old triad boss retires, tries to go straight – but cops still consider him a gangster and triad members still try to bring him back into the underworld).

Not as good as the brilliant Infernal Affairs trilogy, but good anyway.

The deep-cover rookie becomes aide to Andy Lau, who was a top triad boss but went straight. The cops don’t believe he is clean though, so they keep the cop spying on him. The cop, sing, is like in infernal affairs unsure where his loyalties lie, although here it’s simpler: he still thinks of himself as a cop, and he knows Andy is innocent of any crimes since before the cop went undercover.

Meanwhile Andy’s partner, who remained in the triads, is gunned down by the cops and his son vows revenge. But the son turns out to be a real bastard. And the triad bosses want Andy to take over the crippled man’s place as head of the hung hing triad group.

Meanwhile the only commissioner who was sing’s boss at police dies, and sing gets a new boss, a bastard who hates Andy because Andy made a joke of him ten years before.

Oh yeah, Andy’s mom is godmother to a guy in the gangs who is a total loser andliability and will only get them all in trouble.

And Andy’s wife was a club girl and knows how to handle herself.

And Sing’s got a girlfriend who’s a club girl, another parallel between him and Andy.

Lots of twists and turns. Stunts are not so great, action is only fair, but the story is well worked out.

As I wrote, it looks like it was shot on video, I don’t know why. Don’t know why they translated the title as ‘Century of the Dragon’ either.

(written around 13 February 2009)