The Red Band Project

Kev Jumba wields a box cutter. Man behind him is not impressed.

One of the main problems with the gangster flick Revenge of the Green Dragons is the casting. Harry Shum Jr. from Glee as the godfather of Chinatown, New York in the 1980s?  Pfft. I’M more threatening than him and I stand at 5’2” on a good day with asthma. Justin Chon, a gloriously lively actor from 21 and Over , plays an immigrant who grows up within this criminal netherworld, but he was eventually reduced to screaming while pointing a gun and crying with extreme spittle throughout most of the film.

The real impressive performance actually came from Kevin Wa, also known as the hilarious YouTube sensation Kev Jumba. He’s the funny guy getting into Internet shenanigans with Ryan Higa and he’s absolutely, and threateningly, riveting here as Chon’s BFF who is also a loose cannon with a potty-mouth temper and an itchy trigger finger.

“That was my role on Glee.”

In the end, even with the experience behind the directing team of Andrew Lau and Andrew Loo, the whole film felt like a production by a bunch of impressionable film school students who decided to do an Asian gangster movie.

There’s already a similar take on the subject in production, starring Lucy Liu as the Snakehead, the woman responsible for bringing in the Chinese illegal immigrants who become all of these gangsters; so as the characters tell each other throughout Revenge of the Green Dragons, karmically, what goes around, comes around.

There’s another HIFF screening for the film today (Wednesday 11/5) at 8:30pm at Dole Cannery. It may be an imperfect piece, but for Asian gangster flick fans or YouTube groupies, it’s worth it for the amazing Kevin Wa performance.