Before Luc Besson went to Hollywood and gave us the Transporter movies with Jason Statham he made a series of movies about taxi driver Daniel and a cop called Emilian.

Daniel hates cops, Emilien is a cop. Daniel is a great driver, Emilien is an incredibly bad driver. They meet by coincidence (when Emilian is trying and failing miserable to get a drivers license) and become good buddies despite their differences. Well, actually, they don't know about their differences at the beginning.

Apart from these two main characters there are also their girlfriends and the inspector Gilbert along with the rest of the incompetent police force in their village (oh btw, story takes place in France, in French, I watched it with English subs) and a gang of German criminals robbing banks. Furthermore there's a bunch of stereotypical characters with various occupations and nationalities, a lot of dumb jokes, a lot of comedy, a lot of driving, drama & some crazy stunts along the way.

If you haven't seen this movie but still think it sounds oddly familiar, maybe you've seen the 2004 remake, which is basically the same movie Hollywoodified (female lead character for one) with more special effects, less real action, less real comedy; more exaggerated Americanized humor (including less jokes that could be deemed inappropriate by various specific audiences, which really gets rid of much of the core humor) by the same director after he moved out of France.

Don't get me wrong, the remake is a great movie anyway, but as is the case with the El Mariachi low quality budget first make opposed to The Desperado, nothing beats the original... and this isn't low budget either, there are plenty of crashed cars to vouch for that fact.

Overall I love this movie, and the whole series as well. Both lead characters are great lead characters, specially Daniel, he's the humorous good guy who knows how to drive and always seems to be more competent than the police, someone you can relate to... or not... but will like anyway.

If you've watched other French (funny, not those strange abstract) movies and liked them, don't miss this, for real.

 rated 5/5: friggin awesome

Read on...

HOTD, you know what that stands for? That grungy fast-paced two-player shooter from the 90s - House Of The Dead, you say? Nah, what are you thinking, it's Heart Of The Dragon of course! A classic martial arts movie with Jackie Chan in it! Read on...

Woah, this one was actually really good... so how come I've never heard of it earlier? I'm three years late at enjoying this piece of action, but better late than never, right?

The movie follows the same actor as in Aeon Flux, whatever her name is (that's not her above), as she journeys through a contained environment (kinda like Equilibrium) to find a way out, rebel against the system, flunk the high ground and surf the rise. Ok?

There's a lot of martial arts, a lot of special effects, great filmography, a great (even when well-used) plot and eh... don't forget mounds of action, good movie. Worth watching. It gets a...

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

It wasn't too long ago that I watched this movies, but I'm amazed, it's outdated already?! Read on...

I'm disappointed. The movie had Jet Li in it so I thought it would be some kind of amazing martial arts movie with non-stop action, but it turns out it wasn't. After watching this I felt like I did after watching Shinjoku Incident, not too great. Actually the Shinjoku Incident was better, heavier, darker, but just as Jet Li in this movie Jackie Chan didn't get to do any martial arts in that one either. Oh, what about the plot? It's a real drama, family values, someone dies, a little romance, I couldn't care less.

 rated 2/5: decent

AKA Kung-Fu Master... or something like that. Anyway...

In this movie we watch as various masters and descendants and uncles and martial artists all get together and do various stances and kill different people and search for more power and fly all over the place and reach insanely high speeds running at the speed of wind.

Jet Li is somewhere in the very middle of this mess playing a lead character, beating up the bad guys, avenging his father, learning the Solar Stance and doing some great things. It's a mixture of martial arts and fantasy and quite frankly - I don't like it. I'd rather they just skip past that fantasy part and go all out martial-arts, maybe add a little good plot as extra spice. This was a good movie I guess, fast-paced, interesting all the way through, and I'll probably remember it because despite the mess there is some uniqueness to it, but I didn't really like it, much.

Oh, Samu Hung is in the movie too, though he doesn't do much fighting, just a little. He does teach the main character Jet Li Tai-Chi (hey, it rhymes!) to beat the master-villain, but it's a small light in a dark night. This movie is decent, it's actually a really good movie if you like the fantasy and martial arts mixture, but I don't, I like it a bit more realistic. Thus the mediocre score:

 rated 3/5: not bad