abstract:The Flying Dragons () are a well known Chinese street gang affiliated with the Hip Sing Tong; they are active in New York City's Chinatown, and have a presence in Hong Kong, Canada and Australia. The gang moved heavily into heroin trafficking after the Italian-American Mafia lost the trade as a result of the Pizza Connection prosecutions in the mid-1980s.
We get flyingdragons, a breathless opening sequence in which Gandalf (Ian McKellen) plummets down a belching abyss, and Shadowfax, a flawless white horse who will gallop in from nowhere, though only in slow-motion.
Yes, the digital effects are phenomenal -- midget dragons, oversize dragons, a flying coach drawn by seven white birds, a fully rigged ship rising from beneath a lake, aerial shots of the Hogwarts campus that truly put the fanciful buildings on the map -- but they're so skillfully interwoven with the main action that you take them for granted as casual magic.