Brigitte Lin’s cinematic daring was on full display in her celebrated collaborations with Tsui Hark. In six films with Tsui as director or producer, Lin took on some of her most striking performances, throwing herself into action scenes and extravagant gender-bending roles along the way. Among the wild rides is the Raymond Lee-directed and Tsui-produced
Dragon Inn, a supercharged remake of King Hu’s 1967 classic of the same name.
Set in vast expanses of Chinese desert and an isolated inn, the film opens with a speedy intro to Ming dynasty turmoil. The mighty East Chamber, headed by eunuchs including ruthless chief Tsao Siu-yan (Donnie Yen), has the emperor under control but wants even more power. Bloody purges are under way to wipe out opponents, with Military Secretary Yang Yu-hin the latest to be executed. Now seeking the dead official’s right-hand man Chow Wai-on (Tony Leung Ka-fai), Tsao sends Yang’s two children out into the desert as bait.
At the start, the plan seems to work. Opposition fighters indeed show up, with masked swordswoman Yau Mo-yin (Brigitte Lin, in men’s costume) charging straight into a cliff-top battle and her partners grabbing the kids. But when they get away and start heading for the border, Tsao’s army gives chase to find and get rid of Chow. Once Yau, her men and the escapees stop in at the Dragon Inn, the East Chamber pursuers eventually catch up for a tricky game of cat and mouse.
Taking on a remake of King Hu’s towering picture – an innovative
wuxia film with impeccable staging – is a daunting prospect, and Tsui and Lee’s
Dragon Inn (also known as
New Dragon Inn) guns for sensationalism in meeting the task. The inn itself typifies the off-the-wall approach: run by wily innkeeper Jade King (Maggie Cheung), who seduces, robs and kills customers herself, the place is a nest of rogues with human meat secretly on the menu. As in King Hu’s earlier work, the standoff at the inn is a big attraction. But while the original film excelled with tense, stripped-down action set to Chinese opera cues, the 1992 version delivers swordplay in short, breathless flurries. Ching Siu-tung and Yuen Bun’s action choreography isn’t confined to battles, either. Chief among the film’s delights is a bathroom skirmish when Brigitte Lin and Maggie Cheung fight over clothes, leaving the innkeeper naked and defiant on the roof.
Though she first hits the screen with acrobatic swordplay, Lin holds a character that evolves into the emotional core of a love triangle among Yau, Chow and Jade King. The vivid rivalry between Yau and Jade King – one bold and dedicated, the other slippery and conniving – is such a delight that Tony Leung Ka-fai’s Chow is bland in comparison. And come the finale, Lin, Cheung and Leung handle a physically demanding fight sequence as martial arts star Donnie Yen finally gets to show his moves in the harsh desert. Hong Kong
wuxia cinema of the early 1990s thrived on pushing screen entertainment to ever more outrageous extremes, and as it wraps up with its madcap spectacle of flying swordplay and expert butchery,
Dragon Inn shows it was clearly no exception.
Raymond Lee
Raymond Lee Wai-man, born in Hong Kong in 1950, entered film and TV in 1972, working initially on camera crews before directing drama series. After leaving TV, he made his film directing debut with
Set Me Free! (1988). He later joined Film Workshop, where he collaborated with director and producer Tsui Hark on landmark works including directing
Dragon Inn (1992) and co-directing the
East Is Red (1993). After leaving the company, Lee went on to direct other films including
To Be No. 1 (1996) before moving back to helming TV serials.