Critic Reviews

Most of the pleasure in Green Dragons comes simply from the opportunity to watch some underused actors dig into meatier parts than they’re usually offered.

Fredric Dannen's reportage, which appeared in a 1992 issue of the New Yorker and serves as the film's basis, contains lurid details that leap off the page in a cinematic way. The "Dragons" script by Michael Di Jiacomo and co-director Andrew Loo preserves many, but few register on-screen.

What initially feels like brash energy peters out until what’s left mainly evokes pretty ordinary gangster movies.

Bloody, brutal and melodramatic.

In the end the taste of H.K. filmmaking dominates in the film's deliberately chaotic visual style, a circular narrative that heads nowhere, and lyrical song interludes that abruptly interrupt the non-stop action and camera movement.

Green Dragons wants to be spaghetti with marinara, but it's closer to egg noodles and ketchup.

In Lau and Loo’s telling, the off-the-boat indoctrination of young, undocumented Chinese families into vicious gangsterism is overstated and cartoonish, like The Warriors trying to pass itself off as a docudrama.

Like Better Luck Tomorrow, it tries to cut cool-movie poses under the pretense of providing an alternative racial viewpoint to typical genre tropes.

By widening the scope of their based-on-a-true story, the makers of Revenge of the Green Dragon make their subjects look like the products of unimaginative cultural assimilation.

This crudely made thriller plays like a stilted Cantonese riff on organized-crime cliches, substituting blood and brutality for novelty or insight.