City Dragon

City Dragon is a 1995 Martial Arts film.

Needs More Love


 * Abusive Parents - Combined with Info Dump and As You Know, Tina's father (for the one scene he appears in) gives a lengthy explanation as to how his getting Tina's mother pregnant, causing her father (Tina's grandfather) to stop paying for his tuition to medical school, thus ruining his life and dreams, is all Tina's fault, then orders her to get an abortion. When she refuses, he kicks her out of the house and is promptly never seen or heard from again.
 * Altar the Speed - Ray and Tina go on one (two max) dates, she gets pregnant, he proposes, and they get married. Since the numerous jump cuts in the film make the passage of time EXTREMELY hard to follow (though the movie must take place over nine months since Tina gives birth at the very end), this sequence gives the impression that it was one crazy weekend.
 * Ambiguously Brown - Ray, and Tina. Notably, at the end of the film, the child they have together is very, very white.
 * Avenging the Villain - John's brother shows up at one point (along with fifteen of his friends) to take revenge on Ray for John being in a mental institution (even though Ray had literally nothing to do with that). He then insults Bruce Lee, and a fight scene breaks out, at which point Ray defeats them all.
 * Ax Crazy - John. Upon finding out his ex-girlfriend Tina is getting married to Ray from...someone...and then being fired from the restaurant he works in, his first response is to murder three of his former co-workers. Right there in the kitchen. In fact, most of the population of LA seems to count for this, considering the half-hearted attempts at putting fight scenes in what is ostensibly a kung-fu movie (see Disproportionate Retribution below).
 * Bad Boss - Rene, Ray's boss at his job (whatever that is) at 'Business Affairs'. She immediately forces him to sleep with her to keep the job, makes him work incredibly long hours, and then when Tina (Ray's wife and soon-to-be-mother of his child) shows up to see him, she not only acts like a complete and total bitch, she then flaunts her affair with Ray in Tina's face. Apart from this finally causing Ray to quit whatever it is he does there besides Rene, she never receives any sort of comeuppance for her actions, as the film never comes back to her.
 * Berserk Button - Do not insult Bruce Lee in front of Ray unless you're looking for an ass-whupping.
 * Big Bad - John again (even though he gets arrested by Mall Security and spends most of the rest of the movie in the nuthouse).
 * Black Best Friend - Philthy Phil to Ray. Subverted, in that Philthy disappears midway through the film after being stabbed ,, then apparently gets some sort of recording deal off-screen and becomes a radio deejay apparently. Rick, the token white guy, seems to take over as Ray's primary friend after that.
 * Blatant Lies - The back of the DVD case for this movie describes a VERY different movie from the one you're getting.
 * Camp Gay - 'Queen Mary', a gay dishwasher who works at John's restaurant...at least until John murders him.
 * The Casanova - Ray
 * Disney Villain Death: How John meets his end, when Ray throws him from the roof of the hospital during their final fight. Subverted in that we then SEE John's corpse on the sidewalk down below.
 * Disproportionate Retribution - In an effort to convince us this is a kung fu movie, at one point a fight breaks out because Ray bumps into a guy in the park and...causes him to spill his soda. He immediately attempts to beat the crap out of Ray for doing this.
 * Double Entendre/Exactly What It Says on the Tin - After getting married to Tina (after a single date and then finding out she's pregnant), Ray gets a job at 'Business Affairs'...which is some sort of business, where he has an affair with his boss (though she forces him into it).
 * Easily Forgiven - Ray, after having an affair with his boss, and generally treating Tina like crap (though unlike John, he never physically hurts her, it's mostly just sniping between the two of them), which causes her to walk out on him he...has Philthy play a song on the radio on the off chance Tina will hear it (she does), and then after she gives birth she calls him from the hospital to come see her. It's a bit more understandable after he stops John from hurting the kid, but Tina had already seemed to forgive him before that.
 * Fan Disservice - Towards the end of the film, Rick is held up by a model he and Philthy were shown taking advantage of earlier in the film by pretending to be agents (the girl still makes it big regardless), forced to strip naked, and dance around quacking like a duck while her friend/assistant takes pictures, and we are treated to a shot of his pasty, bare ass. Hell, you know what, most of the film's blink-and-you'll-miss-it sex scenes qualify.
 * Good Girls Avoid Abortion - Tina tells her father that she is pregnant, and then he orders her to get an abortion. She refuses, instead declaring she'll go live with Ray, the father, and raise the baby with him.
 * Informed Ability - Ray's skill at rapping. He uses it to woo Tina (on two separate occasions), but it's not nearly as impressive as everyone else in the film makes it out to be.
 * Ladykiller in Love - Happens to Ray within about the first five minutes of the film (his status as a player and user of women is established in two quick scenes right after another that show him sleeping with women and then ducking out on them the next morning).
 * Los Angeles - The Location of the film.
 * Mook Chivalry - Ray gets into lots of fights with five to ten other guys, if not more. He seems to win every one because the guys he fights never try to gang up on him, and in some cases, just stand there and let him punch them.
 * The Nineties - The only way this film could be more 90s is if it came with a Flannel Jacket.
 * Paper-Thin Disguise - John, after escaping from the hospital, somehow gets hold of a surgeon's outfit. Apparently wearing a surgical mask and a cap is such an excellent disguise, not even his former girlfriend (who he abused regularly) doesn't recognize him, and even lets him hold her newborn three-month old lily-white baby while she goes to get something.
 * Padding - Quite a bit, including most of the actual fight scenes.
 * Police Are Useless - Both played straight and subverted. Played straight in the fact that it never seems to occur to ANYONE to go to the police about, say, a woman being abused by her current boyfriend, or the fact that there are apparently no police around to deal with the gangs of thugs (or just random people) who will attack you in the middle of the street in broad daylight for little to no reason. Subverted, in the fact that the one time a law enforcement official DOES show up ('Mall Security! Drop the Queen!'), he's competent enough to arrest the bad guy.
 * Rhymes on a Dime - Ray, Philthy, and Rick have a habit of doing this.
 * Sanity Slippage - Happens to John during his time in the mental institution. Notably, the movie seems to give the idea that John only goes crazy BECAUSE he's in the nuthouse; while he was certainly an abusive Jerkass before he murdered three guys (which should have landed him in PRISON rather than a mental institution), it's not until he's actually institutionalized that he actually seems to go off the deep end.
 * Shirtless Scene - Tends to happens anytime Ray fights.
 * Shallow Love Interest - Tina. Her romance with Ray is pretty much the entire point of her character.
 * Three-Month-Old Newborn - Tina's Baby
 * Token White - Rick. INCREDIBLY uncool.
 * Unintentional Period Piece
 * What Happened to the Mouse? - All over the place due to the many, many, many different plots that are going on during the film, most of which don't have any sort of resolution.