Content consumers wary of any film or TV series branded as an Amazon Prime Original or Netflix Original may have those feelings justified by White Dragon, an eight-episode mystery drama from the U.K. currently streaming on the retail giant’s video platform. Although the Hong Kong backdrop — both the skyline and the street level — is beautiful, and you’ll appreciate the cinematography especially if you’ve visited there before, the series narrative puts the “drag” in dragon. You may even be sorely tempted to bail as early as episode one when the main character unbelievably can’t figure out how to obtain a phone charging cable in Hong Kong of all places!

All the characters in this convoluted crime yarn come across as annoying and unsympathetic, and there is zero chemistry among any of the actors. Most of them alternate from speaking in a stage whisper to yelling.

Even Anthony Wong, an illustrious, longtime star of Hong Kong cinema with 206 acting credits on IMDB, seems to be just going through the motions.

#WhiteDragon is about to ruin our social lives and our sense of security. We're ready. pic.twitter.com/LndahqfhuR — Amazon Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) February 8, 2019

Some IMDB reviewers weighed in on White Dragon:

‘Some really nice Hong Kong scenery, is splashed across the screen but it’s not enough to lift this alleged ‘thriller’ above any other of the numerous boring ‘thrillers’ that British TV keeps churning out.” “Slow moving, weak, cliched and simplistic script, cavernous plot holes, unconvincing protagonists and some truly awful acting… apart from that it’s ok.” “One rather suspects that this story was retrofitted to be set in Hong Kong for funding purposes, because the dialogue and story are generic enough to basically be set in ANY country.”

SPOILERS FOLLOW

The premise revolves around a British woman killed in a car accident in Hong Kong and her professor husband’s efforts to find out what really happened. Since bigamy is in play, the basic premise doesn’t seem to hold up entirely.

If the woman’s husband of record is a Hong Kong citizen, why would the authorities even be aware of a second “husband” in the U.K.? As portrayed in the series, she may have even entered Hong Kong with a phony passport on that trip.

White Dragon (which originally aired in the U.K. under the title Strangers) also contains a number of tired genre tropes that have afflicted many of these potboilers.

This includes the disgraced cop trying to reconcile with a teenage daughter and an unbelievable and incompetent political/corporate conspiracy in which a top official conveniently implicates himself (including personally driving to the scene of the crime while he is being followed). Power brokers don’t personally involve themselves in “opposition research.” That is a function delegated far down the pecking order.

Plus the old reliable: Key characters who inexplicably reveal damaging information or confess for no good reason. And there is always a second murder about one-third of the way through the series.

Related story:Netflix Review: ‘Money Heist’ Crime Drama from Spain Depicts a Huge Madrid Cash Grab

Parenthetically, the back-story scandal in White Dragon may have some slight or marginal comparison to the one in which Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax finds himself. White Dragon ultimately reveals far more egregious, past misconduct by the front-runner in the election for Hong Kong chief executive that triggers the conspiracy.

Perhaps the most absurd part is that White Dragon seems to suggest that movers and shakers in contemporary Hong Kong need to be guided by the Brits. Ridiculous.

Moreover, this is yet again another opus where there was no common-sense monitor on duty when the script was finalized. For example



everybody is home or in the office (in the latter scenario even late at night), at the exact moment when one of the “heroes” needs to talk to them in person.

the showrunners seem oblivious to the fact that instead of traveling around in expensive taxis, most people in Hong Kong use the excellent public transportation system known as the MTR.

If you wanted to eliminate someone in a staged car wreck accident, why would you also shoot the victim since this will ultimately show up in the autopsy? Given the inept way that villains typically orchestrate the coverup to their schemes in the movies, you might wonder if an income opportunity exists for a conspiracy coach.

Is it plausible that anyone can walk up to the front door of a high-level politician/mogul without being stopped by security?

Embassy bureaucrats and paper shufflers don’t get involved in clandestine intelligence operations. And they generally would be protected from arrest under diplomatic immunity.

“Possibly the most baffling part of the writing though is just how little the bigamy angle with [the wife] actually mattered in the end…. her second marriage to Jonah has absolutely zero bearing on what get’s her killed and by all appearances she seemed to be perfectly content with her double life…,” the Snowsnob website observed.

This is kind of small point, but why did main character, Prof. Jonah Mulray (portrayed by John Simm), suddenly take off and abandon his sport jacket when he entered the Macau casino and then complain about it when he was evicted?

To be convincing, fiction must offer some baseline plausibility.

Throughout the series, other players keep telling the Mulray character to end his inquiry and go home. Perhaps the production itself should have taken that advice before the cameras started rolling.

Other Amazon Prime Original Series

On a more positive note, while The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is generating the most publicity, The Last Tycoon is highly recommended. While some of its subplots are lame, this nine-episode series based on an unfinished Fitzgerald novel provides a fascinating window into pre-war Hollywood.

Matt Bomer (as studio exec Monroe Stahr) puts the smooth in smooth operator, and Kelsey Grammer as studio mogul Pat Brady is also outstanding and believable. Dominique McElligott as the Irish waitress/actress also turns in a fine performance. There are even a couple of interesting plot twists that you may not see coming.

With the cliffhanger ending to Season 1, it is obvious that the showrunners planned on follow-up installments. But that’s where life imitated art or vice versa, unfortunately in this instance.

A major plot thread in The Last Tycoon occurs when the Grammer character, in a rebuke to his protegee Stahr, abruptly cancels a major film because the studio was running out of cash. It turns out that Amazon apparently abruptly cancelled The Last Tycoon because of budgeting issues, so there will be no Season 2. Who knows how much further cost-cutting will take place given billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’ upcoming divorce.

While perhaps not historically accurate, the censorship allegedly imposed on Hollywood content by Nazi Germany as depicted in The Last Tycoon could be somewhat equivalent to how Tinseltown is giving in to Chinese regulators now.

Highly not recommended, however is the 10-episode run of Mad Dogs, another Prime original. The series, which is a remake of a British show, involves four high-school friends who get mixed up with drug smugglers while on a reunion vacation in Belize. Shawn Ryan, the creator of The Shield, one of best cop shows ever aired on TV, was among the writers.

Despite that, and its strong cast, the un-bingeworthy Mad Dogs is almost unwatchable, given the utter stupidity of the 40-something quartet as each beat of the series unfolds.

Mad Dogs was mercifully put down after one season.

Separately and not a Prime original, The Dark Valley, a 2014 movie currently streaming on Amazing Prime, provides good escapist fare in the action genre. Filmed like a spaghetti western, it’s a revenge movie that takes place in the wintry Austrian alps circa 1800s. It’s the kind of film that would have been a starring vehicle for Clint Eastwood say 40 years ago. Here, it stars Sam Riley as the stranger who shows up in an isolated village on a mission of mayhem. (Given the extreme weather conditions, it makes one glad to have visited the alps in the summer time.)

Although like all revenge fantasies, the outcome is predictable, The Dark Valley is nonetheless entertaining, although subtitles rather than dubbing would have been better.

Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, this is yet another movie where the bad guys never got the memo that they should protect themselves at all times in a gunfight rather than stand out in the open.

The filmmaker also does a nice thing that you may never have seen before. As the end credits roll, each extra in the village gets his or her own individual closeup.

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