Dragon Inn (1992)
Aka: New Dragon Inn
Chinese Title: 新龍門客棧
Translation: New Dragon Gate Inn
Starring: Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Brigitte Lin
Ching-Hsia, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Donnie Yen Ji-Dan, Xiong Xin-Xin, Lau Shun,
Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Yen Shi-Kwan, Lawrence Ng Kai-Wah, Yuen Cheung-Yan
Director: Raymond Lee
Action Director: Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Yuen Bun, Cheung
Yiu-Sing
As I’ve
stated in other reviews, after The
Swordsman resurrected the wuxia
film in 1990, it brought with it some new rules. More importantly than the
whole wire-fu trended it helped to propagate, it established that every new wuxia film should 1) be an adaptation of
an existing wuxia novel (preferably by
Jin Yong or Gu Long) and/or 2) had already been adapted to film by the Shaw
Brothers. Case in point: The Swordsman was
an adaptation of Laughing and Proud in the Martial World (or however you
want to translate Xiao Ao Jiang Hu)
by Jin Yong and was adapted by the Shaw Brothers as The Proud Youth in 1978.
When
Tsui Hark and his Film Workshop studio (with the help of Ng See-Yuen and
Seasonal Films) decided to tackle King Hu’s classic Dragon Inn, it sort of a tangent of Rule #2: Dragon Inn had been a Taiwanese production, but King Hu made it
after leaving the Shaw Brothers, so it sorta
counts. It is also an all-around excellent remake, following the same story
while adding enough quirks of its own to establish its own identity.
In the
Ming Dynasty circa 1457, the empire is well on its way to becoming a police
state. The eunuchs of the Eastern Depot have amassed a lot of power, having
been placed in charge of the empire’s secret police. In this case, these
eunuchs, led by Cao (Donnie Yen, of 14
Blades and Iron Monkey), have
established the Black Flag Army. Composed of the best martial artists in the
land, the Black Flag Army is in charge of arresting, torturing and executing
all of the Emperor’s enemies. More importantly, they are in employed in
securing the power of the Eastern Depot itself.
As the
story opens, the Eastern Depot has arrested the Emperor’s Minister of Defense
on the grounds of being a rebel rouser. In fact, the Minister of Defense
realized just how much the Eastern Depot was abusing their power and had a
letter sent to the Emperor to rat them out. Apparently, the letter itself was
intercepted by the Black Flags and now the Minister is in their custody. Eunuch
Cao has him tortured and murdered, and then orders the slaughter of his entire
family, save two of his children.
Why save
his children? Well, one of the minister’s most loyal retainers was a general
named Zhao Huai’an (Tony Leung Kar-Fei, of Cold
War 2 and Island of Greed).
General Zhao holds enough power to represent a threat to the Eastern Depot, so
Cao wants to kill him, too. Therefore, he uses the children as bait to lure him
out into the open and sic the Black Flag soldiers on him. That doesn’t quite
work as planned: instead of General Zhao showing up, it’s his lover, Qiu Mo-Yan
(Brigitte Lin, of The Swordsman 2 and
Deadful Melody), who comes to the
rescue with the help of some mercenaries (including Yen Shi-Kwan and Yuen
Cheung-Yan, who fought each other in Once
Upon a Time in China). After a pitched battle with the Black Flag Army and
Cao’s other eunuch cronies, Qiu and her team make a break for it and disappear
into the desert.
In order
to reach the border and get the hell out of China, our heroes have to travel
across the desert to the Dragon Pass. The closest bastion of civilization in
those parts is a small establishment known as Dragon Gate Inn. As opposed to
the original version, in which the inn was run by a man, the owner of the inn
is a beautiful woman named Xiangyu (Maggie Cheung, of The Barefooted Kid and Police
Story). Xiangyu is a bit of a vixen, although part of it is an act to lure
unsuspecting customers into her bedroom so that she can kill them and her cooks
can use their bodies for the inn’s pork buns.
Qiu
Mo-Yan and her entourage show up at the inn with the intention of staying the
night, meeting up with Zhao Huai’an, and then making their way to the border
the next day. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. For starters, Xiangyu
falls madly in love with Huai’an the moment he shows up at the inn. Second,
this is the “rainy” season in Western China and inclement weather (of
near-flash flood proportions) forces Qiu and the others to stay a few extra
days. Finally, while waiting for the rain to stop, a bunch of Black Flag
soldiers led by Eunuch Jia (Lau Shun, of Blade
of Fury and A Chinese Ghost Story II)
show up at the establishment. And thus begins the battle of wits between the
good guys and bad guys, as Cao and his army make their way toward the inn.
Dragon Inn is an excellent film, with strong production
values, wonderful cinematography and editing, great acting, and some solid action
choreography courtesy of Ching Siu-Tung and Tsui Hark regular Yuen Bun. Martial
arts purists will undoubtedly be put off by the excessive use of wires in the
fights—even Maggie Cheung can move from point A to point B inside the inn
without performing a wire-assisted jump—but that’s just how things were being
done in 1992. The story itself is familiar, although it adds a love triangle
element involving the three leads, plus a cannibalism subplot, which goes a
long way to explain how somewhere out in the sticks could have a steady supply
of meat for its guests.
All of the
performances are good, but Maggie Cheung stands out as the vamp owner of the
inn. Her loyalties are constantly shifting between the two parties taking up
residence at the inn, especially when it becomes clear that for all of her
schemes, Huai’an may simply not return her affections. When all of the tension
finally gives way to violence, her Xiangyu character is forced to take a side
and enter the fray. Cheung spent much of the 1980s in more comic roles, and
while she does get to do some sarcasm and fast-talking here in order to cool
down the atmosphere between the good guys and eunuchs, she also goes full
seductress in some parts and sword-swinging badass at the end. She was
nominated for Best Actress at the 1993 Hong Kong Film Awards, losing to…well…herself,
for her dramatic powerhouse role in Center
Stage.
From a
technical standpoint, the film looks great. Arthur Wong’s cinematography should
have won an award, but Center Stage got
that instead. Nonetheless, Wong did get nominated for his work at both the Hong
Kong and Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards. The running fight in the desert sands
at the end is one of the most beautifully-filmed swordfights on film. Hung Poon
also got nominated for Best Editing in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, and his style
compliments Tony Ching’s choreography just fine.
The
action here is also quite good, having garnered a nomination at the Hong Kong
Film Awards, but actually winning it at the Taiwan Golden Horse Awards. Those
looking for real martial arts will get a little bit at the beginning, as we see
the Black Flag Army in training. There is also some at the end, when Donnie Yen
finally throws down with our protagonists amidst a sandstorm. Apparently,
Donnie Yen choreographed his own movements for the scene, creating a one-handed
form for the shuang shou jian, or
two-handed straight sword. According to Donnie Yen’s website, he also sustained
a serious eye injury during this sequences, but kept filming nonetheless. In
fact, the material on his site best describes the finale[1]:
"[This fight
sequence], with twirling and twisting bodies flying through the air amid clouds
of sand (courtesy of Ching Siu-tung’s signature wirework), are phenomenal.
You’ll be guaranteed to gasp when Yen rises from the buried sands to take on
the heroes. It’s a spectacular and surprising entrance, and Yen sustained a
serious eye injury while executing the stunt. However, undeterred, he returned
to continue filming the confrontation scene, taking on the stunt doubles for
Brigitte Lin, Leung Ka-fai, and Maggie Cheung, and choreographing his own
movements in this fight. It’s a whirling dervish of a scene. Furthermore, Yen
exhibits masterful skill with two-handed straight sword forms, this weapon
rarely being seen in films[2].
Yen earlier trained in this style while studying in China."
Thanks
to its expert technical credits, strong soundtrack, a great performance from
Maggie Cheung, and an unforgettable finale, Dragon
Inn both honors its inspiration and stands on its own as one of the best wuxia pian of the 1990s New Wave
revival. Producer Tsui Hark directed a sequel to this movie some 19 years
later: Flying Swords of Dragon Gate,
starring Jet Li as Zhao Huai’an and Zhou Xun as Xiangyu.
[2] - Michelle Yeoh used this
weapon in the final phase of her duel with Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
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