Liu Jian, an elite Chinese police officer, comes to Paris to arrest a Chinese drug lord. When Jian is betrayed by a French officer and framed for murder, he must go into hiding and find new allies.
Whack! Thworp! Crack! Sometimes, it's fun to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of bad guys getting their heads beaten in.
– James Berardinelli,
ReelViews,
9 Jul 2001
fresh:
Li jumps into a series of martial arts sequences of flying fists and balletic moves that truly reinvigorate a genre that has gone stale even in Asia.
– Kirk Honeycutt,
Hollywood Reporter,
6 Jul 2001
rotten:
The characters in Kiss of the Dragon are more cardboard than usual for an action movie.
– Robert K. Elder,
Chicago Tribune,
6 Jul 2001
rotten:
Kiss of the Dragon offers just about a kill a minute, but less than a thrill a minute.
– Stephen Hunter,
Washington Post,
6 Jul 2001
rotten:
Kiss of the Dragon does have a sense of its own absurdity, but that doesn't prevent it from cloaking the inherently comic kung-fu genre in a seriousness so solemn that it could be French.