New Dragon Gate Inn (UK)

New Dragon Gate Inn is one of those rare Chinese action films that actually has a plot and makes sense (well, most of the time anyway). It centres around the "New Dragon Gate Inn", with some top performances from Donnie Yen as the bad guy, and Maggie Cheung.

The film is very different to others in the Hong Kong Legends collection. It is not the usual Martial Arts fighting, but more a fantasy swordsplay adventure, based in the inn of the title. It is not one of the best films I have ever seen, but it is still very enjoyable.

The picture is of good quality for a Chinese film, although it is a little soft sometimes. It is presented in a 1.78:1 ratio with an anamorphic print. The film is 8 years old so the print must have been kept in good condition.

Audio is a liitle more disappointing. Unlike other all the other HKL titles, New Dragon Gate Inn only has one audio track. Thankfully, this is the original Cantonese track (In 2 channel Dolby Digital, although there is no use of rear speakers), and not an awful dubbed one. It would have been nice to have an English dub as an option though. There are English subtitles (which can be turned on and off), so you have no worries about having to learn Cantonese just to watch the film.

Extra features are the usual in the HKL range - a few music promos for the other films in the collection, a trailer for New Dragon Gate Inn, a short interview with Donnie Yen (including footage of The New Big Boss - class), and the standard photo collection and biographies.

Overall, a good film, well worth seeing if you like fantasy swordsplay and don`t mind Cantonese soundtracks.

Dragon gate inn is okay average movie, bit arse. Don`t expect much. Hey but the The New Big Boss clip is well wicked man.

Only one stream audio which is Cantonese no english dubbed. Get Iron Monkey its much better. Oh yeah plenty of trailers from other movies cept trailer music is well annoyin.

This had all the makings of a classic. Great plot, directing, acting, locations and script. Where the fault lies is in the editing. A martial arts movie needs to have decent action scenes and though well constructed, you never get the chance to see them fully as the editing destroys it. A real pity as this was a genuinely good film.
Nonetheless, some people will still enjoy it. If you can overcome the style and also lack of action scenes, you will enjoy this. The DVD has a good transfer and useful extras.