Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

龙门飞甲

Hong Kong/China, 2011, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 121 mins.

Director: Xu Ke 徐克 [Tsui Hark].

Rating: 8/10.

Enjoyably retro swordplay antics, with a superb cast but a weak finale.

STORY

China, Ming dynasty, A.D. 1477. Under the weak rule of Emperor Xian Zong, court eunuchs effectively control the country at all levels, not least through the feared imperial secret police departments, the Eastern Bureau and Western Bureau, which have power over all civil and military activities. Eastern Bureau envoy Wan Yulou (Liu Jiahui) arrives at Long Jiang (Dragon River) naval shipyard to oversee the execution of two men and to flush out a third official perceived as enemies of the state. However, the three men are rescued by freedom-fighter Zhao Huai’an (Li Lianjie), who also kills Wan. Yu Huatian (Chen Kun), eunuch head of the recently established and even more ruthless Western Bureau, takes up the case. Meanwhile, after executing two palace maids who have become pregnant by the emperor, Yu Huatian sends a squad to kill a third, Su Huirong (Fan Xiaoxuan), who has escaped. At Red Stone Gorge, Su Huirong is rescued by a swordswoman (Zhou Xun) in male dress who claims to be Zhao Huai’an. Hearing the news, Yu Huatian sets out to catch Su Huirong and Zhao Huai’an himself, and is attacked on the way by Zhao Huai’an and his men, who observed the swordswoman’s rescue and decided to help her. Zhao & Co. narrowly escape with their lives from Yu Huatian’s ship and Yu Huatian sets out for Dragon Gate, deep in the northwestern desert, where he reckons the swordswoman and Su Huirong are heading. Since the previous owner, Ling Yanqiu, disappeared, the inn there has become a meeting place for robbers and killers, and human flesh is on the menu. As the swordswoman and Su Huirong arrive, a giant sandstorm is imminently due, and the inn fills up with people taking refuge: a group of lusty Tatars, led by tribal princess Burudu (Gui Lunmei), a group of Western Bureau agents led by Tan Luzi (Sheng Jian), and a young bandit, Gu Shaotang (Li Yuchun), and her companion, professional informant Bu Cangzhou (Chen Kun), who bears a striking resemblance to Yu Huatian. Zhao Huai’an also arrives in disguise and, as the sandstorm approaches, everyone’s fate becomes entangled with a massive 300-year-old treasure trove hidden under the sands which is briefly revealed every 60 years by the “black” sandstorm.

REVIEW

Much more satisfying than his previous blockbuster Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame 狄仁杰之通天帝国 (2010), though still let down by a weak finale and lack of any emotionally involving characters, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 龙门飞甲 is the best movie by veteran Hong Kong writer-director Xu Ke 徐克 [Tsui Hark] for 15 years. Despite being jazzed up with modern-day 3-D – effectively used, especially at the start with an aerial swoop through model dockyards and huge flying logs during a subsequent fight – the film is utterly retro in flavour, recalling not just Xu’s earlier classics like The East Is Red 东方不败之风云再起 (1993) with its power-crazed eunuchs and manga-like action, but also, from its main titles with a traditional Chinese orchestra and brushwork credits, a whole earlier tradition of swordplay movies represented by directors like Hu Jinquan 胡金铨 [King Hu] (A Touch of Zen 侠女, 1970).

Like most of Xu’s movies, Flying Swords is a jumble of back-references, hommages and reinventions, knitted together by his quicksilver imagination. But there’s still a visible line from Hu’s classic Dragon Gate Inn 龙门客栈 (1967), which effectively invented the “inn drama” with shady characters assembling for a showdown, through the later remake, Dragon Inn 新龙门客栈 (1992, aka New Dragon Gate Inn) which Xu produced and co-wrote, to the current film, also set in Hu’s favourite era of the Ming dynasty when powerful imperial eunuchs operated a police state under the Gestapo-like Eastern and Western Bureaus.

The good thing about Flying Swords is that Xu has tempered his trademark whizz-bang editing and delight in F/X to a point where even the action is comprehensible, giving his superb cast time to actually deliver performances. Until the final half-hour, in fact, the movie is pretty much a sheer pleasure, with the large cast each getting screen time without disturbing the overall flow, and individual sequences (such as eunuch Yu’s first scene, at Dajue Temple) conjuring up real dramatic tension. The script also shows signs of some serious input by Mainland-born writer He Jiping 何冀平 (The Warlords 投名状, 2007), who worked on several movies in Hong Kong during the 1990s under pseudonyms, including Dragon Inn.

The less good thing is that the finale – a lengthy, two-part affair, starting with a desert battle and ending in an underground palace – doesn’t knit all the character threads together into a climax worthy of the film till then. Xu simply slips into Hong Kong default mode, with action and effects driving everything, character thrown out of the window, and the various love stories perfunctorily dealt with. This is hardly surprising for a Xu movie, but is disappointing nonetheless, given the quality of the script for the preceding 90 minutes.

Both Mainland tomboy singer Li Yuchun 李宇春 (in only her second screen role, after Bodyguards and Assasins 十月围城, 2009) and often weak-jawed heartthrob Chen Kun 陈坤 are perfectly cast as a spunky swordswoman and epicene eunuch, the latter recalling the turn by Taiwan actress Lin Qingxia 林青霞 [Brigitte Lin] as a power-crazed transsexual in The East Is Red. In a double role, Chen is equally good, however, as a professional informer who comically trades on his resemblance to the eunuch. Strongly cast, too, are throaty-voicd Zhou Xun 周迅, as an in travesto swordswoman with a complicated past, and Taiwan’s Gui Lunmei 桂纶镁, escaping her more usual sweet roles, as a lusty Tatar princess. Li Lianjie 李连杰 [Jet Li], the titular star, is actually off-screen for much of the time, but still makes a mark as an action personality when he appears. Among many other well-drawn suppports, veteran Liu Jiahui 刘家辉 [Gordon Liu], now in his mid-50s, gets the movie off to a thumping start as an evil eunuch who ends up skewered and crated by Li’s swordsman.

Aside from the traditional Chinese music used mostly at the start and finish, the main score is uninspired. Production design by Hong Kong veteran Xi Zhongwen 奚仲文 [Yee Chung-man] and costumes by Lai Xuanwu 赖宣吾 (from Taiwan’s theatre world) recall an earlier age of swordplay movies with a slightly more realistic edge – though both the main inn set and the characters’ clothes lack the visual interest of the recent, way-smaller-budgeted Treasure Inn 财神客栈 (2011) by Hong Kong’s Wang Jing 王晶 [Wong Jing].

CREDITS

Presented by Bona Film Group (CN), China Film (CN), SMG Pictures (CN), ShineShow Interactive Media (CN), Bona Entertainment (HK). Produced by Film Workshop (HK).

Script: Xu Ke [Tsui Hark], He Jiping, Zhu Yali. Original story: Xu Ke [Tsui Hark]. Script co-ordination: Dong Zhe. Photography: Cai Chonghui [Johnny Choi]. 3-D photography: Liu Jiahui, Li Ziwei. Editing: Qiu Zhiwei [Yau Chi-wai]. Music: Hu Weili [William Hu], Li Hanjiang, Gu Xin. Music direction: Zhang Bin. Production design: Xi Zhongwen [Yee Chung-man]. Art direction: Liu Minxiong [Ben Lau]. Costume design: Lai Xuanwu. Sound design: Kim Seok-weon. Action: Yuan Bin, Lan Haihan, Sun Jiankui. 3-D supervision: Chuck Comisky. Post-production supervision: Lee Ji-yun. 3-D postproduction: Lee Yong-gi. Visual effects production: Mako Hideyuki. Visual effects: Kim Uk, Josh Cole, Zhong Zhihang (Digital Idea, Eclipse Studio, Crystal CG, Digital Art Design). Executive director: Yuan Weidong.

Cast: Li Lianjie [Jet Li] (Zhao Huai’an), Zhou Xun (Ling Yanqiu/Jade), Chen Kun (Yu Huatian, Western Bureau head, eunuch; Bu Cangzhou, aka Fenglidao/Wind Blade), Li Yuchun (Gu Shaotang), Gui Lunmei (Burudu, Tatar tribal princess), Fan Xiaoxuan (Su Huirong), Fan Shaohuang [Louis Fan] (Ma Jinliang, Western Bureau master fighter), Liu Jiahui [Gordon Liu] (Wan Yulou, Eastern Bureau local commander, eunuch), Sun Jiankui (Chai, inn boss), Sheng Jian (Tan Luzi, Western Bureau no. 2), Du Yiheng (Ji Xueyong, Western Bureau no. 3), Wang Shuangbao (Zhao Ping’an), Xue Jian (Lei Chongzheng), Han Feixing (Hagang Tongna, Buludu’s sidekick), Li Bingyuan (Ling Guozhou, sidekick of Zhao Huai’an), Li Zhuo (Xiaoxin), Wu Di (Zhao Tong, Western Bureau assassin), Li Junru (Dong Dan), Li Sibo (Gangzi), Qu Gang (Fang Jianzong), Lv Deliang (Yu Zheng), Dai Ming (Can Kangzhi), Zhou Daqing (Tan Zixin), Zhang Xinyu (imperial consort Wan), An Qier, Gao Jie, Gangtemuer, Zhang Qiufeng, Zhang Dong, Baisiguleng (Tatars), Shi Zhanjie, Shi Kai, Wei Bo, Sha Xuezhou, Xiao Rui, Wu Fei, Zhang Zhaoyu, Zhang Chenglin, Shi Zhenglin (Western Bureau caravan members).

Release: China, 16 Dec 2011; Hong Kong, 22 Dec 2011.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 23 Jan 2012.)