By Cannes is starting to get rolling this year and sadly Flixist is not on location as we spent our “fly to France” money on booze, hookers and movie tickets. Despite our lack of being there (and multiple STDs from those hookers) we’re still intent on bringing you the news from film’s big European party. Some of the early news is that The Weinsten Company has scooped up the world distribution rights to the Donny Yen martial arts noir film Dragon, which is premiering at Cannes on May 14.
The film, which was directed by the increasingly awesome Peter Ho-Sin (The Warlords, Bodyguards and Assassins) and is known as Wu Xia in its native land, has a stellar kung fu cast beyond Donnie Yen, who also happens to be choreographing the fights, including Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei. Early buzz on the movie has been good and while we may not all love the Weinsteins as people they’ve got some good taste in movies. Plus, how can the combination of noir and kung fu not excite you?
The story itself takes place during the late Qing Dynasty and centers around Liu (Yen) and Detective Xu (Kaneshiro). Liu is living a peaceful life until Xu comes to investigate a murder and threatens to dig up the secrets of Liu’s past and destroy Liu’s entire village while he’s at it.
We’ll most likely get the film in 2011, but if you’re dying for some noir action now Flixist has you covered with our ongoing film noir week.
