I’m generally a sucker for an international co-production action movie, especially the ones based in Chinese martial arts but with some western stars. For example the one with Milla Jovovich, or the one with Coolio, or NAKED WEAPON. But I’m suspicious of these big period piece ones with an American star or two outside of their usual context. I’ve even hesitated to pull the trigger on the one with Arnold in it. I’m still a defender of THE GREAT WALL, but most of these are not Zhang Yimou joints. It’s easy to assume that the Hollywood guy is phoning it in for a paycheck and the international producers are trying to coast on name value, leaving us to be bored by a bunch of yelling and sword clanging and CG armies.

DRAGON BLADE (2015) also has the hurdle of being a late Jackie Chan movie, but it defies the odds. Give or take some of the awkwardness of the format, this is an entertaining (and charmingly corny) story about what happens when a rogue Roman legion link up with a badass squad of disavowed Chinese peacemakers.

Chan plays Huo An, captain of the elite Protection Squad, who do defensive martial arts and settle conflicts between nations along the Silk Road. In the opening he puts himself in the middle of a fight between Xiongnu and Indian warriors, stopping Lady Cold Moon (Lin Peng, LITTLE BIG SOLDIER) by grabbing the end of her whip and trying to dodge her blows without fighting back. There’s a groaner of a joke where she falls onto him and he accidentally grabs her boobs, causing great embarrassment, but I actually did laugh at a later joke where she gives him wine and drops her gown for him and he does a firebreathing spit take. See, her veil fell during their fight, he goes to her palace to apologize, by which time she has decided they’re meant to be together. When he runs away she looks so sad. Thankfully, we’ll be seeing her later.

The only good reason to say no to Cold Moon is that he’s already married to saintly Xiu Qing (Mika Wang, THE BOOK OF MYTHICAL BEASTS), who teaches orphans of different nationalities, sharing his mission of creating peace between all cultures. But right after he’s returned to her after a long mission he finds out the higher ups have framed the Protection Squad for taking bribes, and they’re all sent to do hard labor rebuilding the city at Wild Geese Gate. Nobody there seems to get along, but they tentatively unite when they see a Roman legion approaching the gate. Uh oh. The whites.

Up to now I’ve been enjoying the movie, but it’s been all Chinese. Now here comes the star of THE PAPERBOY, GRAND PIANO, BLOOD MONEY and DRIVE HARD as General Lucius, riding in on a horse in slow motion, leading 800 troops. I saw him in his armor, I wondered how badly he was jonesing to vape, and steeled myself for the movie to turn to shit. But then he goes to check on Publius (Jozef Waite), a sick, blind child he’s protecting, and it’s immediately clear that Cusack is actually invested in this role. He made I think the correct choice to not do an accent, just play it modern but sincere.

And then he faces Huo An. Cusack looks so much sleeker and more confident in his armor, very upright and cocky, and I realized that I was actually buying the famous martial artist being outmatched by the guy from SAY ANYTHING. A real magic trick. Come to think of it, Cusack fought WHEELS ON MEALS villain Benny “The Jet” Urquidez in GROSSE POINTE BLANK, and an IMDb search says Benny was also a stuntman or fight coordinator on CON AIR, THE CONTRACT, 1408, WAR INC. and SHANGHAI. Also, “Ever heard of kickboxing? Sport of the future?” He’s gotta be a fan, right? Being in a Jackie Chan movie might not be a paycheck for Cusack, it might be a dream come true.

I’m sure this is in some sense Chinese propaganda, but the kind that’s preaching all nations and cultures should get along and make peace and shit. A sandstorm approaches while Lucius and Huo An are dueling, so Huo An says “Stop fighting, I let you in. Or we bury here together.” And they go inside. Before we know it there are official negotiations and the Romans agree to help finish the gate. In a montage they build together, learning from each other’s methods (like rolling a heavy load over a series of rolling logs), and later some of these are also used in battle.

I love a good international tournament movie where there are rivalries before they become fight brothers, but this is sweet how they mostly skip that step and just have a cultural exchange like it’s the world’s fair. They show off their fighting styles with demos and sparring. They exhibit good sportsmanship and show each other respect, even hug. Each group has their own percussion that they play. The Protection Squad sing their theme song (“I swear to turn turmoil into peace” and stuff like that). Then the kid starts singing like a choir boy and the Romans join in singing a patriotic anthem to Rome.

Publius is not the type of kid character I prefer to see in a movie, especially since this follows the Chinese melodrama tradition and has him do way more crying than he would in a Hollywood movie. It’s upsetting. But there’s a cool backstory that he’s a prince and his older brother Tiberius (Adrien Brody, PREDATORS) intended to kill him in a plot to seize power, so as the kid’s assigned protector Lucius felt they had to go on the run. Also it’s cute when the kid decides to knight Huo An (and turns out to be important because it gives him the right to challenge Tiberius to a duel).

You may have noticed I’m watching movies related to the current Oscar nominees. I watched this for Brody, who seemed like the Best Actor frontrunner until Chalamet won the SAG Award Sunday. Brody gets the “and” credit here, and unlike Cusack he does not transcend our expectations for an American star in a mostly non-English movie. His screen time is limited, he’s doing a pretty bad accent and he goes mega without much tonal control. But I found him entertaining.

To see those famous sad eyes surrounded by a long mane, fancy armor and fur, lording over the troops and being maniacally evil – obviously it’s novel. And for his final duel he’s able to do more and make the character work. It was worth casting a real actor just for his (spoiler) death scene. You get to see the unaccountable bully realize that his neck is cut and it’s all over. Then he tries to blurt out something but his voice is too weak for us to even understand it. Sorry dude, nobody cares.

(I had to use the subtitles to know he was trying to sing that Roman anthem. Too late, pal.)

Cusack gets treated much worse than he usually would in an American movie (he gets his eyes cut out and chained up in a burning building) but I bet he appreciated that. Huo An eventually accepts that he can’t save him and tearfully crossbows him out of his misery. Sad violins play and we follow as the arrow moves in slow motion over the flames toward poor tortured Lucius. I laughed at the crassness of making us watch him die, but just before the arrow hits it dissolves to a beautiful sundrenched view of the city they built together, sometime in the future, with people walking through it. Oh, that’s nice, I thought, but then it dissolves back to show the arrow nail him in the throat. (Best of both worlds.)

There’s plenty of the good shit here for our pleasure. Lots of different styles of action, and Jackie doing a cool thing where his sword is tied to his wrist so he can throw it and yank it back into his hand. One of those LORD OF THE RINGS/AVATAR/AVENGERS: ENDGAME deals where different factions show up late to the battle, playing different types of instruments. Cheesy but cool CG attack birds. Huo An wearing the late Lucius’ headband into battle as a tribute. Tiberius even makes note of it. He mocks it but I bet deep down he knows how cool it is.

There’s definitely a “white person in a Jackie Chan movie” feel to the performance of French singer Lorie as the Parthian Queen, but she only has a few lines. Sharni Vinson, star of STEP UP 3 and YOU’RE NEXT, plays Lady Crassus, a character important enough to be mentioned by Lucius, but I think she’s only in one shot of a flashback, playing harp. I didn’t recognize her and had to go back when I saw her name on the end credits. The woman character who makes the biggest impression is Cold Moon, who returns to do two things, kick ass and shoot arrows, and she is not gonna run out of arrows.

She rescues Huo An’s wife, who’s like thank you for rescuing me, what’s your name? And she says “I am Moon, Huo An’s wife.” (SPOILER) His actual wife is killed later, so maybe he’ll honor it, I don’t know. He’s either still in shock or already done grieving, because he tells Tiberius he’s getting revenge for the death of his friend Lucius, and does not mention Xiuqing.

DRAGON BLADE is written and directed by Daniel Lee (BLACK MASK), with action direction by Chan. The production values are strong, better/less CG and green screen than if they did it now, and lots of enormous scenes with hundreds of costumed extras fighting and doing stunts on big outdoor sets and shit. Also a pretty good score by Henry Lai (THE LOST BLADESMAN) combining all kinds of cultural and genre influences. Sometimes it sounds very eastern (the part of the world) but also kind of like a western (the movie genre).

Unfortunately there’s not a sword called a Dragon Blade or anything like that. The title is just about vibes, I believe. According to Wikipedia the literal translation of the original title is CELESTIAL GENERAL, HEROIC ARMY. It would be cool to have a Dragon Blade, though. I think any celestial general or heroic army would really appreciate a Dragon Blade.