From master visualist Tsui Hark we have 'The
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate', and if you've seen a couple of
Tsui Hark's film's from his lengthy and insanely successful
film career, then you know my man is big on action, can paint
a picture on film… or digital… as well as anybody ever, and
most of the time he allows the story he's trying to tell go
wherever the heck it wants to. It's comforting to know
that after a career spanning four decades that some things
never change.
We're somewhere in China, it's back in the day, and as per
usual political strife abounds. Admittedly most of my
knowledge of ancient China comes from watching kung fu movies…
hanging my head in shame… but political unrest was almost
always the order of the day back then. In this alternate
reality we learn that the emperor is allowing his kingdom to
be policed by two oppressively brutal forces, the East Bureau
and the West Bureau. On this particular day an East
Bureau chief, always some eunuch, is about to execute some
rebels for being all rebellious and stuff, but not so fast my
friends because he's about to meet Zhou Hahn (Jet Li) and his
amazing martial arts skills. I mean the eunuch ain't
bad, but seriously… it was over at hello.
It appears this type of shameful defeat is typical for the
East Bureau which is why the upstart West Bureau is taking
charge, led by the extremely lethal eunuch Yu Huatian (Chen
Kun) who has dispatched one of his chief eunuch's on a simple
mission, on behest of the emperors number one concubine, to
find a wayward maid (Mavis Fan) who has gotten herself knocked
up. If I'm not mistaken there's a chance that this maid
could've possibly been knocked up by the emperor, which is why
she has to die, but it is unlikely.
Fortunately this maid was saved by the
lovelorn swordswoman Li Yanquiu (Zhou Xun) who will continue
to lookout for this poor maiden while praying that her one
true love, Zhou Hahn, makes it back to her arms.
Whatever.
Eventually, everybody in this movie, and more characters all
descend upon this dilapidated inn that's located in the middle
of nowhere with a crazy sandstorm looming. The evil
eunuch Yu Huatian is there, along with a gaggle of his fellow
eunuch capos and their men all looking for the wayward
maid. The maid and Li Yanquiu are there, though I
can't rightly remember why and Zhou Hahn is there looking to
finally end the terror of the West Bureau. Also there
are some treasure hunters including some barbarian queen (Gwen
Lun-mei) and her men, another lethal swordswoman (Li Luchun)
and her right hand man Broken Wind, who by chance happens to
be the spitting image of evil eunuch Yu Huatian. The
ultimate goal of these treasure hunters is to find the lost
city of gold and get rich. Or die trying.
More stuff happens… I mean a lot of stuff happens, mostly
incessant chatter, but ultimately it is going to boil down to
misdirection, sleight of hand, betrayal and mad kung fu
action. Finally. And despite the fact I miss real
live humans on wires risking their lives, replaced here by
dodgy CGI, it was still mostly worth it.
Tsui Hark's 'The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate' runs a little
over two hours long and its two hours that at the same time
feels way too long, and then just not long enough. I
know, right? The reasons for this are pretty simple…
kung fu action good, even the fakey looking CGI scraps...
incessant chatter bad. There are so many characters in
this movie and so much going on and so much external stimuli
being thrown at the audience that is a little difficult to get
your bearings as to what exactly is going on. It also
seems that this film is really banking on the fact that you've
seen 'The Dragon Inn', which this is supposed to be a sequel
to. The thing is while the events of 'The Dragon Inn'
occurred for the characters in our film a couple of months
ago, they occurred to the audience back in 1992. I think
I saw 'The Dragon Inn' but heck if I remember anything about
it. By the time everybody makes it to the Inn, the movie
stalls out quite a bit as we have to figure out who is who,
what is what, who's doing what to whom and who's up to
what. It was tedious. At best.
Finally the action fires back up and the movie gets good
again. Some of this action is based on a series of
events that still has me a little confused as to how they got
where they are, but its good action nonetheless. I mean
it's crazy action. It's completely bananas type
action. When a pair of characters have a 'Beat it' type
face off, chained together in the middle of a tornado, that's
crazy. Then watching them fight in Dorothy's house from
The Wizard of Oz in the same tornado is even crazier.
The performances were solid, particularly Chen Kun in both his
roles in this film, especially considering how diametrically
opposed the two characters he was playing were, all of the
ladies were lovely and lethal, and Jet Li did a fine job
anchoring it all down.
'The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate' is almost a must see simply
because it's Tsui Hark back to doing what Tsui Hark does best,
crafting crazy action amidst a wacky, borderline incoherent,
overly confusing storyline, and with his latest film he proves
once again that he is one of the few film director's that can
almost get away with this.
