O Retorno do Dragão - A Cidade Perdida

During the Ming dynasty, the corrupt imperial eunuchs are using their powers to wrongly accuse government officials and taking over the country. The eunuchs are divided into the old East Bureau and the newer West Bureau as the emperor's all knowing spies. Zhao Huai'an (Jet Li) defeats the dictatorial leaders of the East Bureau. The West Bureau led by Yu is more skilled and chases after Zhao Huai'an. The Emperor's chief concubine Wan refuses to let any other maids get pregnant. Pregnant maid Su Huirong escapes and gets rescued by a Zhao Huai'an impostor. Zhao Huai'an sees his impostor and Su Huirong chased by the West Bureau. They head out west and end up in the desert outpost Dragon Gate during a sand storm. There they find bandits, Mongols, crooks, thieves, and rumors of a hidden treasure.

This starts off as a battle between Zhao Huai'an and eunuch Yu. However the story keeps adding characters. It's not incomprehensible but it is a disjointed way of story telling. The movie has plenty of CGI fights and big scenes. I'm willing to go with it until the various groups gather at Dragon Gate and I'm forced to more or less give up. It becomes a mess and I stop caring about half the people in this movie.

The Flying Swords of Dragon Inn expands upon the mythos created in the earlier two films, and throws in a lot more formidable characters as well as their respective selfish objectives and missions, starting with the lead character of Zhou Huai'an (Jet Li), a vigilante in the Ming Dynasty responsible for a spate of killings of corrupt court officials. With the King forming the East and West Bureaus in the same fashion as the FBI and CIA respectively, an incredible set action piece that serves as a prologue has Zhou dispatching the head of the East Bureau in a special appearance by the legendary Gordon Liu, to make the case of how powerful Zhou is with his lightning quick reflexes and special moves that we don't see much of, and gets that special effects boost as well.

You see, Zhou disappears for about more than half the movie, which is a pity since Jet Li's star billing is used everywhere. Like a wandering swordsman who pops up every now and then to help the poor and the weak, the damsel in distress here is a palace handmaiden (Mavis Fan) who is on the run for carrying what would be the Dragon baby, impregnated by a naturally lecherous Emperor whose concubine sets the entire plot in motion for wanting any female with the possibility of producing a bloodline to the throne terminated. With Yu Hua Tian (Chen Kun), the head of the West Bureau her pillow partner, the game is afoot when the handmaiden gets rescued by Ling Lanqiu (Zhou Xun), the female equivalent of Zhou Huai'an whose brooding demeanour hints at a past romantic liaison with Zhou, and who harbours some secrets of the infamous Dragon Inn which is now populated by rag tag characters,

There are subplots galore in the film, whose screenplay is also written by Tsui Hark, that will call for your utmost attention in order to keep pace and make sense of it all, some properly developed while others relying on your past knowledge of the Dragon Inn mythos as foundation in which this retelling is based on, allowing you to connect the dots why certain events are done the way they are now. For instance, in Hu's original film, there are bloodlines on the run which get congregated at Dragon Inn, and this one loosely follows that rationale. And for once, we know why various groups descend upon this inn in the middle of nowhere, if not for the very ordinary reason of having treasure buried somewhere in the midst of the vast wasteland, and to hunt for it meant to exploit the tunnels beneath the inn, make sense of some inscribed couplets, and depending on 1 in 60 years (not 1 in 50 years ponding in Singapore mind you) geographic events to allow all the cards to fall into place.

However, like all great martial arts epic, the fun always lies with the villains, and Flying Swords boasts a memorable number of them. Chen Kun's Yu Hua Tian has in possession the title Flying Swords that brings back the hey days where gimmicky weapons are the order of the day in swordfighting films, and is himself an adversary who knows no mercy. His double role here makes this almost like a Chen Kun starrer, and a well deserved one for the performance put in as characters on either side of the fence. His cronies too are as bad as bad can be, and are exponents in their own right, with Fan Siu Wong as the masked Ma Jing Liang, and the Western Bureau second in command Tan Lu Zi (Sheng Jian) who unfortunately gets outfoxed most of the time.

As a martial arts film, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate has enough variance in its fighting stances and styles, and to exploit 3D, naturally has stocked up on its flying dagger numbers to provide for those throw-toward-the-screen moments. It's quite hit and miss here, as some effects were wondrously too rich and too artificial that takes you out of the movie and may look more in place in a science fiction film instead, while others are done just right to blend in with the period surroundings. With a number of Chinese films these days just slapping on special effects like it was butter on bread (Culprits being films like Legendary Amazons, The Sorcerer and White Snake which also starred Jet Li, and just about every period flick coming out in the last year or two), this one may have to convince those who are turned off by the earlier shoddy productions.

Tsui Hark continues to reinvent himself with each technological leap, with his Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain (1983, not the 2001 monstrosity), the Once Upon a Time in China series, and now with Detective Dee leading the charge and sealing the deal for his comeback, Flying Swords may just be that magic ticket Tsui Hark needs to re-establish himself as one of the greats in Asian cinema after a woeful past decade. It may not be an instant classic, but Flying Swords does have the necessary ingredients to make it amongst the game changing tent- poles of the genre.

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate must be watched in stereoscopic 3D to be properly appreciated. Its abundant visual spectacle is so clearly tuned for 3D that watching the film in anything less would mean you're not watching the real film at all. In 2D, the CGI backgrounds & objects are distractingly bad, robbing many scenes of their drama and gravitas. But in 3D, somehow it all works and you're transported into a vibrant, gorgeous world delivered with maximum visual panache.

If can watch this film in 3D (it's not hard -- Your smartphone & a Google Cardboard VR headset will give you full brightness 3D that's brighter than the cinema's 3D!), then this is a must see. If you can't, then don't even bother with this film.

I watched this in 3-D and have to say it was worth it. There are some amazing effects on display here. Something even the critics will not deny the movie. What they will say of course is, that the movie is a bit of a mess when it comes to the plot/story department. And that accusation is not wrong. It's the visuals Tsui Hark is most concerned about. Which means you get more than a handful beautiful staged and choreographed scenes and sequences.

But the story isn't that bad and though bumpy, still easy to follow. Not many will criticize Michael Bay or any other Hollywood director for their focus on the technical aspect rather than the development of plot and character. This still is superior in the character department, even though it has some major flaws there too.

Still, if you want a good time with an enjoyable Eastern you could pick worse movies.

I find this film much better than the original. In the original the fights were too weak and fake. Here the fights have more power, although the one in the Cyclone was weakened by not so good special effects. Still I must completely disagree with a reviewer who almost destroyed this movie with his comment about too many special effects. "Thanks" to him I was imagining something terrible and I am glad to have watched the film! I think who saw the "New Dragon Inn" will enjoy this film more, because he will know some of the story, and of the Characters. There are better films of course, but this is a good movie and absolutely deserves to be watched, if you like intrigue and martial arts. Characters are good, the plot is not great but IMO better than in the original, and the style of fights, even if not the best, is for me better than in the original, because more appropriate to what I started to like since when I watched Hero. I would give it 7.5 if I could.