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.
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.
– Mark Jenkins,
Washington Post,
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:
The characters in Kiss of the Dragon are more cardboard than usual for an action movie.
– Robert K. Elder,
Chicago Tribune,
6 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
fresh:
Whack! Thworp! Crack! Sometimes, it's fun to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of bad guys getting their heads beaten in.