TWIN DRAGONS
Chan plays a pair of twins separated at birth (gee, that's a new concept),
who don't know they had a twin until they meet by accident. One of them,
Boomer, has become a street punk who loves to fight and is in trouble with
some local gangsters. The other, John Ma, is a famous conductor scheduled
to appear at a very important concert in Hong Kong. Boomer's girlfriend
is Barbara (Maggie Cheung), a streetwise nightclub singer; John's is Tammy
(Nina Li Chi), a classy girl whose father wants her to marry John. Needless
to say, everyone gets the two men mixed up, and soon Boomer is on stage
trying to conduct the philharmonic while John is attempting to fend off
the fists and bullets of a bunch of angry bad guys. And the girlfriends
get switched, too.
Mistaken identity is an old standard concept for comedies; many of Shakespeare's
plays use it as the central theme. But there are clever ways to portray
it and there are stupid ways, and Twin Dragons uses the latter. It
is painfully clear throughout the film that if one or both of the characters
would simply make a 5-minute explanation, all would be understood, but for
some reason they both fail to tell anyone what's going on, protracting the
unpleasantness for all concerned (especially the audience). Finally they
decide to join forces and end up in a Mitsubishi plant, fighting for about
an hour with the bad guys who are holding Boomer's friend Tyson (Teddy Robin
Kwan) hostage.
If you look at this movie from an "it's so lame it's funny" standpoint, you're likely to enjoy it more. That was the only way I could convince myself not to walk out in the middle. Not only do the American voices fail miserably to match any mouth movements made by the Chinese cast, but the scenes with the double images of Chan are incredibly poorly executed. The fight finale in the auto plant is interminable; if it had been cut in half it still would have been too long — but that would have been at least a step in the right direction. I admit Chan's physical agility is amazing; his legendary acrobatics are used in full force. But not being a teenaged American boy (anymore) definitely hurt my ability to get much enjoyment out of this shallow fist-fest. *½