Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon

Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon follows expert martial artist Leroy Green (Taimak) as he returns to the big city after years of training, with complications ensuing as Leroy almost immediately raises the ire of a local monster and his threatening enforcer. It’s a familiar premise that certainly could’ve been put to use in a by-the-numbers yet compelling actioner, although it’s clear almost immediately that filmmaker Michael Schultz has something far more campy and off-the-wall in mind – as Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, by and large, has been saddled with an often egregiously over-the-top feel that slowly-but-surely invalidates its few positive elements. There’s little doubt, as well, that the progressively oppressive atmosphere is perpetuated by an often astonishingly padded-out midsection, as scripter Louis Venosta floods the movie’s often endless second act with a whole host of pointless, time-wasting sequences. (Why are there so many music numbers, for example?) Taimak’s decent performance is rendered moot, unsurprisingly, while the picture’s scant few action sequences are hardly able to make the visceral impact Schultz has intended, which ultimately does confirm Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon‘s place as a woefully misguided disaster that’s rarely as much fun as one might’ve anticipated.

* out of ****

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