If the storytelling had been a bit tighter, I would have had no issue making King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn the second kung fu film that I have ever given a 10/10 rating to. But as it stands, the story can be a bit hard to follow. More than once I found myself asking who certain characters were and why they were fighting each other. But it never got to the point where I was frustrated. Everything else about the film works. The fights aren't just great, they are given incredible dramatic weight. I loved seeing a kung fu film set near China's frontier, a setting that I still feel is criminally underused. The scenery and buildings all seem dusty, sun-bleached, washed out. In many ways this feels like a Western, especially considering the fact that the film revolves around a small group of individuals in a single building being accosted by armed outsiders (Rio Bravo [1959] anyone?). This is a siege movie masquerading as a kung fu epic that channels American (and Italian) Westerns. It is, in a word, exquisite.
Check it out! I wrote a piece about this movie!
http://theretroset.com/dragon-inn-and-out/
9/10
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