Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Martial Arts
Director: Wilson Yip
Year: 2006
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
It’s a lot easier to admire aspects of Dragon Tiger Gate than to love it. But there’s a lot to admire.
The first thing that you notice is the art direction by Jeff Mak, William Chang, and Eric Lam and the cinematography by Ko Chiu-Lam and Cheung Man-Po. The color palette is striking and wholly original. In one scene, Dragon (Donnie Yen) walks through a cyan-colored field wearing a blue t-shirt. It’s a gorgeous image. Other scenes feature earth tones set off by gold, red and pale green. You would think it would feel like a kaleidoscope threw up on the screen, but no. The effect is magical, a candy colored-world related to ours, but several steps removed.
The same goes for the set design. The sets integrate geometrical constructions associated with video games with real world details, such as weathered stone.
Even the special effects aren’t too bad. We’ve come a long way from Storm Riders, folks. The digital effects are not quite where they need to be, but they’re within striking distance. Like the set design and the art direction, the special effects need to be an extension of reality, not completely separate. Often, when one of the characters is thrown against a wall, shards of brick break off, and it’s almost convincing.
What Dragon Tiger Gate reminds me most of in the quality of its visuals is the 1991 classic comic book adaptation, Savior of the Soul. That film too had a tremendous amount of visual imagination behind it, but that imagination extended to the characters and story as well.
And therein lies the problem with Dragon Tiger Gate. The story and characters are perfunctory.
The great character actor Yuen Wah is Master Wong, who runs Dragon Tiger Gate, a martials arts school and a force for good. His two proteges are Tiger (Nicholas Tse) and his older brother Dragon (Donnie Yen). Dragon left Dragon Tiger Gate when he was a kid and became the bodyguard of Kun (Chen Kuan-Tai), a gangster. A power struggle between Kun and his rival Shibumi ultimately involves Dragon Tiger Gate, bringing together Tiger and Dragon to protect their heritage.
That’s fine as far as it goes. Many great martial arts movies have been made from variations of that plot and those characters. But having stated who the characters are, there is no development to speak of, and what there is consists of the lazy device of flashbacks. It doesn’t help that Nicholas Tse is a rather bland actor, but even if he weren’t, he doesn’t have anything to play.
In place of a compelling characters and a twisty plot, the filmmakers substitute killer visuals and excellent fight choreography.
I’ve got to say, this is the best fight choreography I’ve seen from action director Donnie Yen yet. One way in which Donnie Yen’s work in the past has been lacking is that the martial arts moves were sped up in an obvious way. The martials arts moves are sped up in Dragon Tiger Gate too, but subtly, just enough to be impressive, but not enough to pull us out of the movie. There is a lot of wire work, but it is incredibly smooth and functions as an extension of the natural martial arts abilities of the actors. The action scenes are consistently compelling.
But it’s not enough. In spite of what filmmakers in Hong Kong and Hollywood seem to think, a compelling story and characters are never going to be optional, even in a comic book movie, which Dragon Tiger Gate certainly is.
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