Dragon Tiger Gate (2006) June 29, 2009
Posted by Cal in : Action, 2000s films , trackbackDirector: Wilson Yip Main cast: Donnie Yen; Nicholas Tse; Shawn Yu Territory: Hong Kong
Childhood friends Dragon (Donnie Yen) and Tiger (Nicholas Tse) reunite as adults on different sides of the Dragon Tiger Gate, a place where youngsters are taught to become heroes. While Tiger has become an upstanding citizen, Dragon has become the top muscle for the criminal Lousha gang and its masked head, Shibumi. The two friends come together with the help of nunchaku-wielding friend Turbo (Shawn Yu) when the master of Dragon Tiger Gate (Yuen Wah) is killed by Shibumi.
I realise I’m incredibly late with this one. Generating massive buzz back in 2006, I’ve only just got around to seeing it. Reuniting director Yip and Donnie Yen from the previous year’s superior action film SPL, and chucking a sizable budget at the screen, the hopes were high for Dragon Tiger Gate.
Dragon Tiger Gate starts with a bang, and delivers high energy action from choreographer Yen – who incidentally seems to have found a time machine somewhere along his travels as he appears to be getting younger as the years go by. While the action is along the more fantastic wire-fu variety, it is delivered in an exciting way and almost never ceases to be enjoyable. The inclusion of Turbo and his ever-present nunchaku grounds the film in some kind of reality when he’s present (barring some special effects shots) and the mixture works well.
However, the narrative isn’t so good. I suspect a lot of this is down to being based on a comic strip – there are far too many characters and back-stories thrown in that it quickly becomes frustrating. I imagine fans of the comic strip will appreciate the detail and thoroughness of Dragon Tiger Gate’s weaving storylines, but personally I thought the film could have lost a few characters and not been any the worse for it. Again, this is probably obvious for fans of the source material, but I found the partly modern urban and partly dark fantasy settings a bit strange. It’s always going to be hard to fit a well-established literary serial into a 94-minute movie, but I just wished they’d have simplified it a bit for newbies.
It’s always nice to see Yuen Wah in an action role (albeit rather digitally enhanced) and he has a good, meaty role as Master Wong. Other than him and the leads, though, the rest is all pretty forgettable, except for a scene with a fully dressed Li Xiao-Ran taking a dip in a swimming pool. Even third lead Turbo is somewhat a mystery and even though I love nunchaku scenes I thought his character was surplus to requirements.
With so many people praising Hong Kong’s action sequences in an age where they are no longer as accomplished as they used to be and ignoring their much improved ability to tell a good story, it’s always a shocker to see something directly to the contrary. And that’s what Dragon Tiger Gate is for me – a lot of good action scenes with some less inspired dialogue and uninteresting characters in between.
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With that hair, it took me a long time to recognise Donnie Yen! I think he is underrated though - check out the fight scenes in Flash Point - but I can’t remember much about DTG - I’ve got the 2 disc Region 3 DVD and will watch the film again, but haven’t got around to using the free tattoos though!
I’ve still not seen Flash Point! I really do have to get that soon.
I’ve got the Region 3 2-disc edition of DTG too, but I didn’t get any tatoos
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The R3 DVD I’ve got has a slipcase with a metallic sheen. The tattoos, I think, are the three symbols of Yen’s, Tse’s and Yu’s characters. It maybe a limited edition - I got the dvd when it first came out for £9.99.
Cal, Here is the biggest problem with this film. I watched it in January of this year and other than the beginning time has made it quite forgettable in my memory.
Flash Point has one of the best action sequences I have seen in years. The plot is so-so but oh such excellent fight scenes. Such a great mixture of MMA, Judo and Kung Fu.
Here’s what I quickly wrote about Dragon Tiger Gate in January:
Dragon Tiger Gate (2006: Hong Kong: **½/****): For many Asian martial art fanboys, this is mostly known as the film between Wilson Yip Wai-Shun/Donnie Yen’s SPL (2005) and Flash Point (2007) (Yip is the director and Yen is the star/choreographer of all three and yes they will work together in their next production Ip Man (2008)). While the other two are gritty combination of triad/martial art genres, this film is a CGI filled “comic book” film based on a Hong Kong comic called “Oriental Heroes”. Unfortunately many times throughout the film I get the feeling of a teenage action film with he biggest problem of a stereotypical plot.
Tiger Wong (Nicolas Tse) is the good son and possible heir apparent to the academy Dragon Tiger Gate which is run by Master Wong (Yuen Wah, Eastern Condors) and Dragon Wong (Donnie Yen) is the bad son (who is good at heart) who must come to terms with his past. On a side-note, the age difference between these two is hilarious, especially since you seen flashbacks of them as kids and they are only a couple of years difference. In real life Donnie could be Nicolas’s father.
The beginning has an excellent comic-book influenced introduction and amazing action scene that actually makes good use of cinematography mixed with wire-influenced action. However, there is not much action until the end (which is good) and the plot does not get past stereotypical plot/characterization of death of master/revenge for master which has been done to death for many decades.
Action fans will like scenes of this movie and are probably the only ones who would enjoy this movie.
Yes, I’ve since read quite a few reviews of this that say pretty much the same thing - “nice action, not much else”.
I’ve finally ordered FLASH POINT. It was £3.99 on Play.com for the 2-disc edition, which seems WAY too cheap! Even in my new penny-pinchng phase, I couldn’t pass that up!!!