Tat Fung (Jackie Chan) has a dream of sailing around the world, but he’s trapped taking care of his mentally handicapped brother Dodo (director Sammo Hung). When Dodo gets involved with jewel thieves, Tat must save him one more time.

This film is against expectations. Hung plays a child in a man’s body and never fights once, while the final fight where Jackie defends him is brutal, filled with violence where Jackie usually uses comedy. And then the end of the movie blew my mind. The world of action movies rarely shows its heroes go to jail for acting above the law. It costs him his freedom and for a time, his girlfriend Jenny (Emily Chu).

This doesn’t have a lot of action for most of the film, other than the jungle violence in the open and the closing moments. Maybe they were saving everything up for the last scene where eight different stuntmen all fall from some of the highest of heights.

If I saw this in my early years of watching movies, I probably would have disliked it as all I would have wanted would be more fight scenes with Hung, Chan and Corey Yuen against bad guys James Tien, Dick Wei, Chung Fat, Phillip Ko-fei and Kao Sau-leung. But now that I’m getting old, I see the beauty in this film and why Hung made the movie that he did.

The Arrow release of Heart of Dragon has a 2K restoration from the original negative by Fortune Star, as well as two cuts: the 91-minute Hong Kong theatrical cut and the 99-minute extended Japanese cut, which has commentary by Frank Djeng and FJ DeSanto. It also has two extended featurettes made to promote the Japanese release by Shochiku; interviews with Chan, Rocky Lai, Hung and Arthur Wong; alternate English credits; a trailer; a music video; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Gilbey and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Dylan Cheung and David West. You can get this movie from MVD.

You can also stream this movie on the Arrow player. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.