Dragon Inn

Janus films bookends its re-release of King Hu's 1971 wuxia masterpiece "A Touch of Zen" with the re-release of another King Hu film, 1967's "Dragon Inn". As with "A Touch of Zen," the film is beautifully restored and given a 4K digital transfer. The period colors shimmer.

The story is familiar enough. It's the 15th century; a powerful eunuch, Cao, maneuvers his way to a position of overriding influence in the imperial court and sees to it that a high ranking official named Yu is unjustly sentenced to death. Yu's entire family condemned, with his children exiled to the farthest reaches of the realm. But the eunuch is not content to let any part of Yu's family live; he dispatches agents from the East Espionage Chamber to assassinate them.

Assassins, offspring, old allies, bystanders, and a gifted, itinerant warrior all converge on an inn near the Dragon Gate, far out on the frontier. The assassins, led by Commander Pi, arrive first, and set about murdering and intimidating the inn's staff; but the innkeeper's friend, Xiao, a gifted swordsman, happens upon the scene. Or does he? It turns out that the innkeeper, Wu, is an old friend of the Yu family, and he's asked Xiao to meet him in order to draw him into the conflict and make use of his talents. When the surviving members of the Yu family pay him for his protection, Xiao proves a fearless and incorruptible ally.

Two siblings, allies of the Yu family -- one of them a woman disguised as a man -- also show up to help defend the Yu children. They, too, are accomplished fighters, as are a pair of gifted mercenaries who defect from the evil East Espionage Chamber when Xiao and Wu show them kindness. But when Cao himself arrives to deal with the fugitives, all bets are off. Who will win the series of epic battles that ensue?

This film is shorter than "A Touch of Zen," and the story tighter and less given to anecdote. In some ways, until it opens up for a climatic battle on a mountain pass, this is a bottle story, with most of the action taking place inside and around the inn. There is some wire work, but mostly it's used to show opponents flying toward one another in the heat of pitched combat; other effects use camera moves and clever editing to suggest super-fast, exceedingly nimble movement and fighting technique.

"Wuxia" isn't quite the same genre we reference when we speak casually of "martial arts films," at least not in the case of King Hu's movies or the wuxia films that have excited Western audiences in recent years ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hero," "House of Flying Daggers," or the new Netflix "Crouching Tiger" sequel, "Sword of Destiny"). In the films there's an abiding philosophy that discipline and training can confer exceptional physical powers as well as mental and spiritual ones. This idea has found its way into the Western film canon in films like those of the "Star Wars" franchise, but the setting for particular film (not so much its storyline) also had me thinking of Tarantino -- in particular, "The Hateful Eight."