I've seen Li only in the first "Once Upon a Time in China," and that was some time back. Can he really be as unexciting as he comes off here? I'm hesitant to lay it all on him; the director, Chris Nahon, making his feature debut, clumsily films most of the action in medium shots, which prevent us from seeing Li's whole body in motion. And though Nahon has a penchant for violence, he doesn't have a flair for it. In "Kiss of the Dragon," Li is a distanced, rather joyless figure. His moves are fast and brutally efficient but without any concomitant grace. Part of the joy of watching Jackie Chan is that he's an instinctive clown; his face always registers amazement when one of his moves actually works against the bad guys. And Bruce Lee, the apotheosis of all martial-arts movie stars, has a lean, mean fire in his eyes that added to the impact of his kicks and punches.

Li certainly cuts a sleek figure in his invariably all-black (Jet-black?) outfits, and his face, chiseled and yet a little unformed at the same time, isn't a bad camera subject. But in "Kiss of the Dragon" he gives off neither wit nor sadistic relish. He's the fastest moving stiff I've ever seen.

The plot of "Kiss of the Dragon" (as if anyone will go to it for a plot) has to do with a Chinese agent (Li) heading to France to assist the Parisian police in busting a Chinese heroin smuggler. He doesn't know that Richard (Tchéky Karyo), the cop in charge of the operation, is using his office as a cover for his shadow life as a crime boss. Moving to take over the heroin smuggler's business, Richard engineers the guy's murder and frames Li for it.

	"Kiss of the Dragon" Directed by Chris Nahon Starring Jet Li, Bridget Fonda, and Tchéky Karyo Print story E-mail story

The machinations of the rest of the movie have to do with Li trying to clear his name and get out of Paris, though it must be said he doesn't seem particularly eager to accomplish much beyond sitting in his safe house, eating dumplings and those great spongy shrimp chips you get in Chinese restaurants. Almost as an afterthought, Bridget Fonda enters the movie as a prostitute working for Richard, who got her addicted to heroin and then stole her daughter to make sure she stays under his thumb. It's a crummy, thankless role, but even when she has to service the dumb script, as in the scene where she squats down to pee in a shop doorway, Fonda, as always, works in a recognizable human range.

Is there a better unsung actress in the movies? I have seen Bridget Fonda in more bad movies than good ones (though the latter, including "Shag," "A Simple Plan," "Rough Magic" and "Monkeybone," is far from a negligible bunch) and I have never seen her give a bad performance. She has a quality that might be defined as melting canniness. She seems completely open and yet completely wised up to what's going on at the same time. Here, disheveled and in streetwalker drag, stuck with the third-rate melodramatics of the repentant hooker/yearning mom role, Fonda still somehow seems like a real person. Even the color of her eyes seems keyed in to the character's desperation: Her usual sparkling green peepers here have the cloudiness of dulled jade.

Tchéky Karyo doesn't even get to seem human. As the movie's chief baddie, he's shot most of the time in glowering close-up. And he's too dapper a man to sport the silly little goatee stubble he's got here. Karyo has always been a foolproof actor (foolproof being defined here as someone who could be good in "The Patriot") and, in "Addicted to Love" and "Saving Grace," a charming one. It's dispiriting to see him in this generic Euroscum role.

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