Sunday, January 7, 2007

Dragon Boys Review


A two part miniseries airing today and tomorrow on CBC. It’s about a Chinese Canadian RCMP gang squad officer and westcoast Asian gangs.
When I read about it in the paper I expected it to be another bad Canadian production. Well, I watched it tonight and it was not as bad as I expected it to be. In fact, it was entertaining and there were talented actors, but nevertheless there was still a very Canadian production element.


The warning indicates, “Disturbing, realistic portrayal..” umm, the following scenes were very disturbing, and gave it a low-budget look. *Warning-Spoilers*

-The Caucasian girl in the yellow sportscar with a 1991 spiral perm drinking a bubble tea and smoking a cigarette. They should have saved her $8 extra wage and used it to buy some tea pots for the restaurant scenes, which brings us to:
-Jason working in his parent’s restaurant walking around with a pitcher of ice water. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver where the waiter/ess walks around with a pitcher of water.
-The hairstyle of “Movie Star”. It looks like a mullet. Horrible haircut. “Movie Star” actually has a handome face, but that stringy mullet is so distracting it takes away from the show.
-Movie Star in his black silk robe screaming at the girl on the couch to “Take a shower!”. That whole scene was just so bad.
-Why is it that Movie Star has an accent, but his brother Linkoln has no accent. “…we’re in this togedder”
-What is the point of the stripper and the RCMP officer having a sexual relationship. It adds no value to the show.
-Vancouver is known for having very good looking strippers. Why do they have to use one that looks so old??
-The soundtrack..
-At the crime scene when Willy gets shot, all the neighbours are outside the yellow tape. More than half of the spectators are Caucasian. Come on, it’s Richmond.
-The scene where “Movie Star” beats up the white guy outside his car for no reason.
-When the Cambodian model goes shopping with the big guy with tattooed tears, they’re obviously in some Asian mall store but there’s a white guy working there. That’s like an impossibility. And what’s with the strange dancing in front of the panda.
The OUTFITS on the younger actors
-The red fur coat on Jason’s friend, I saw it twice on the show, each time cringe-worthy
-Black thickly knitted sweater with shiny leather coat, cheap sunglasses, thick gold chain and fancy mullet on “Movie Star”. Come on now, Asians, and Asian gangsters dress really well. They don’t wear cheap ass International Clothier clothing.
-The supposed junkie white girl that assists in the home invasion, aside from her hair, she looks so healthy and fit.
-Tommy’s (RCMP guy) and Jason’s bitterness about Asian stereotypes.
-it seems like the junkie girl and Jason take a pretty long bus trip and stay in a motel (with sliding glass doors?!?) anyways, Jason goes to pick up some food, and during the time that he’s gone, junkie girl calls her boyfriend and he’s already at the motel.

I actually felt kind of embarrassed in some of the above scenes.

On the other hand, these features were really good.
Majority of the actors, especially:
-RCMP officer Tommy – Byron Mann
-Willy the duck – Eric Tsang
-The lady playing Willy’s wife
-one of the guys in high school, he really looked gangster, one of the three guys that go to the restaurant grand opening. The guy on the very right. NOT the albino with the blonde hair.
The sets they used, houses, condos, massage parlor and restaurant.

If they got rid of the scenes I mentioned earlier, it would have been sooo soo much better. And I don’t know why, but I really liked the scene where the guy comes out of the Casino.

I think if “Movie Star” had a normal haircut, the show would have been so much better. Or maybe Movie Star and Linkoln should have traded roles. I found Jason’s role (the son of the restaurant guy that gets involved in the home invasion) really annoying. In fact, I was hoping he would get beat up.
I thought it was cast well, but I think it might have been more interesting if Linkoln was the RCMP guy, Tommy was the "movie star", and "movie star" had a haircut.
Anyways, I’ll be tuning in tomorrow to watch the conclusion. I feel they jammed too much in during tonight’s show. They could easily spread it out over 8 hours instead and developed some of the side stories.

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