Popular reviews

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  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★★

  ̶R̶a̶y̶m̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶L̶e̶e̶ Tsui Hark takes on the King Hu classic. This retelling adds Tsui's signature hyper (stylized) wuxia action, his humour and his horniness. It definitely isn't the landmark achievement that King's original is, but it is hella entertaining. Many of the martial arts sequences had my jaw on the floor, and I appreciated the gore FX added towards the end.

  I have to say that I really love the trope in Hong Kong period movies of female characters disguising themselves as men simply by putting on traditional men clothing and everyone being totally fooled by it. How could anyone mistake Brigitte Lin for a man when her face is clearly visible? At least Maggie Cheung saw through her "disguise":

  Bartender: The man in black is the leader.
  Cheung: That's a woman!
  Bartender: That's a woman?
  Cheung: Anyone who doesn't look at me [longingly] is not a man!

  I mean, she kind of has a point there? 😍

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  Tsui Hark written/produced remake of Hu's Dragon Inn remains one of his most underrated works. It is not King Hu, but its own thing: the film flashes all the multiple negotiations, turns the inn into a doomed place around a desert, gives an extra political edge. The action exists in sharp contrast to King Hu's essential cleanness, it is chaotic, baroque and full of spectacular non-realist moves. The shots don't have Hu's dynamism, but near attack the audience. The climax, set around a desert storm and unleashing Donnie Yen as the evil eunuch, is one of the better ones from that era. Also, there is Maggie Cheung in one of her better performances, more or less playing Bogart on Casablanca and walking away with the movie.

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  Review by AJ ★★★★ 4

  What Dragon Inn has proven to me is that one of the great travesties of cinema is that Maggie Cheung never played a pirate captain. Her performance here is full-bodied and charismatic on another level. The world deserved, at least, a few Maggie Cheung pirate movies. She owns this movie.

  Dragon Inn is a loving remake of King Hu's classic of the same name, but still strives to exist in its own space. The action here is chaotic and jumbled as opposed to the clean, concise work of Hu's. The action on display here is tons of fun and in-your-face, while still being choreographed clearly and excellently. The political machinations are much more overt and serve to give an additional weight to this version unlike the breeziness of Hu's original. It's impressive how much this remake is able live on its own while still being endowed with affection for Hu's.

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  Review by ALISTAIR LEACH ★★★★ 6

  Sassy Maggie Cheung....

  90s hyperactive remake of the King HU classics, which possibly may hold the Guinness world record for edits, and possibly endusing epilepsy attacks.

  Ok. so this is a lot sexier than the King Hu version, due to the restrained love triangle between Maggie, Brigitte and the other Tony Leung. This is a really fun 90ish of mins of great action sequences and some even better playfully one-up-man-ship between multiple characters.

  Really enjoyable.

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★½ 4

  Nominally directed by Raymond Lee, who I don't think I've ever heard of before. His only imdb credits on films I recognize are for Film Workshop products that show the heavy if not exactly named influence of Tsui Hark and/or Ching Siu-tung (namely the Swordsman series). Tsui was pumping out movies like a madman in the early 90s, with 18 producer credits between 1990's Swordsman and 1993's Once Upon a Time in China IV, so it's likely that, after working out the screenplay with his co-writers (Charcoal Tan and Hiu Wing), he farmed off the actual direction of this to Lee, either alone or in combination with Ching (who had a mere ten solo or co-director credits over that same period, including his Johnnie To collaborations The Heroic Trio, Executioners and The Mad Monk). If anyone is the "auteur" of the film, it's probably Tsui.

  More here.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★

  "Before, we could always escape from every danger. But the world has changed for the worst."

  New Dragon Gate Inn posits the question: what if Dragon Inn but with horny Maggie Cheung? As someone who fell in love with the original Dragon Inn earlier this year, I went into this optimistically but with modest expectations, and in that respect the movie more than met me halfway. The differences between the two are manifold, but the most notable must be the erasure of Shih Chun's wandering martial artist. His void is filled by Maggie Cheung, who plays the gender-swapped innkeeper with a vastly expanded role, an irresistible succubus who seduces men in order to chop them up for the inn's signature…

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  Review by 𝐿𝒾𝓁𝓎 ★★★

  This film is so fucking gay lol. The scenes where Maggie Cheung checks out Brigitte Lin, who is cross-dressing as a man, and where they fight naked while appreciating each other's bodies are peak cinema. They should have gotten together instead of both of them pursuing the boring protagonist unbearably heterosexually.

  Maggie Cheung is incredibly hilarious and charismatic, easily the most captivating character in this film. She's a goddess. The hold this woman has over me is insane.

  The Mandarin dub fucked this film up pretty bad but it was the only version accessible. One thing I can say is that this film is like a western film for Chinese folks.

  The martial art sequences were impressive, and the set pieces felt intense. However, I don't envision myself revisiting this film because it's a straightforward martial arts movie without much depth. I'd prefer to watch Wong Kar Wai's Ashes Of Time repeatedly.

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  Review by DungeonSkramz ★★★★ 1

  Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin's bathroom fight scene where they compliment each other's bodies is peak cinema. Though I guess the ending climax with Donnie Yen in the desert is a close second.

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  Review by Daxtreme ★★★ 3

  Beautiful, beautiful movie with great artistic value but that ultimately makes very little sense. It felt to me like the actors carried the movie hard (specifically the Maggie Cheung - Brigitte Lin - Tony Leung trio).

  I don't know why but under-cranked sequences featuring horses really look bad. Like, a lot worse than those featuring only human actors. There's no real reason to under-crank those sequences either so I have no idea why they did it, because it looks horrible.

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  Stunts - 81/100 | The wire work is pretty good and looks great.

  Narrative - 67/100 | After a dubious beginning I felt like the movie found its footing once the Dragon Inn entered the play. However, about halfway…

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★

  king hu's original dragon inn is about the most perfect film that i can think of, so any attempt at a remake/reimagining is necessarily fraught. new dragon gate inn has tsui hark's wacky fingerprints all over it, with loads of bawdy comedy and a more up-front political statement, and while i usually don't mind either of those things, the chaotic presentation never fully gels with what is a fundamentally simple story. it's beautiful and nimble in its gestures, but also overstuffed and adrift.

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  Review by Jessica Yeung ★★★★½ 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Another film in which Brigette Lin starred as an androgynous character. The stunt coordination was esp. great - by Yiu-Sing Cheung, Siu-Tung Ching, and Bun Yuen. The reference to the Water Margin female character (here played by the sly Maggie Cheung), Sun Erniang is the underworld of jianghu in the wuxia fiction - the jianghu here is the Dragon Gate Inn and the attendant relationships between the characters are bound by the laws of jianghu accordingly. This film also reminds me of the poetics in Ashes of Time (1994). I think NDGI must have influenced on Wong's making of AOT.

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  Review by _Stephan_ ★★★★

  Very good Film with two Wonderful Leading Ladies!!!