It
was a time when eunuchs terrorized the land.
However, a handful of wandering knights are willing to challenge them,
even at the cost of their lives. Good
multi-taskers, they will still find time for a bit of treasure-hunting in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (trailer here),Tsui Hark’s
monster 3D return to the legendary Dragon
Gate Inn world, which opens a special two-week IMAX-coming-straight-at-your-head
limited engagement this Friday in New York.
Sort
of but not really a sequel to Raymond Lee’s 1992 Dragon Gate Inn (produced and co-written by Tsui), Flying 3D picks up three years later in
movie time. Dragon Inn burned to the
ground and the femme fatale proprietress disappeared under murky circumstances,
but since there was a demand for a sketchy flophouse right smack in the middle
of sandstorm alley, the inn has been rebuilt by a gang of outlaws. While they might roll the occasional guest,
they are really more interested in the legend of the fabulous gold buried
beneath the sands.
Two
mysterious swordsmen calling themselves Zhou Huai’an will find themselves at the
remote outpost after tangling with the corrupt eunuch bureaucracy. One Zhou has just rescued Su Huirong, a
potentially embarrassing pregnant concubine from the forces of the East Bureau. This Zhou also happens to be a she and she
has some heavy history with the man she is impersonating. For his part, the real Zhou Huai’an has just barely
survived a nasty encounter with the East’s top agent, Yu Huatian.
The
doubling continues when fortune hunter Gu Shaotang shows up at the inn with her
partner Wind Blade, a dead-ringer for the evil Yu. Add to the mix a group of rowdy,
hard-drinking Tartar warriors, led by their princess Buludu and you have a
rather unstable situation. Before long, sides
have been chosen and a massive gravity-defying battle is underway, as the
mother of all sandstorms bears down on Dragon Gate Inn.
Frankly,
the 3D in Flying is so good, the
initial scenes are a bit disorienting. Tsui
probably has a better handle on how to use this technology than just about any
other big picture filmmaker, dizzyingly rendering the massive scale of the
Ming-era wuxia world. Flying is also quite progressive by
genre standards, featuring not one but three first-class women action
figures. When the headlining Jet Li
disappears from time to time, he really is not missed. Of course, when it is time to go Mano-a-mano in
the middle of a raging twister, he is the first to step up to the plate.
All
kinds of fierce yet genuinely vulnerable, Zhou Xun is fantastic as Ling
Yanquiu, the Twelfth Night-ish Zhou
Huai’an. Likewise, Li Yuchun is a
totally convincing action co-star as the roguish Gu, nicely following-up on the
promise she showed in Bodyguards and Assassins. Yet, Gwei Lun Mei
upstages everyone as the exotically tattooed, alluringly lethal barbarian
princess. Her Buludu is both more woman
and more man than Xena will ever be. In
contrast, Chen Kun is a bit of a cold fish in his dual role, which suits the
serpentine Yu just fine, but does not work so well for Wind Blade.
