Bullet Points: Dragon Tiger Gate
Two of my favorite Donnie Yen movies are SPL: Kill Zone (2005) and Flashpoint (2007). If you didn’t know, somewhere between those two amazing action extravaganzas Donnie Yen found the time to make 2006’s Dragon Tiger Gate. This is another recommendation from our good friend Jolly Saint Dic . I would tell you to follow him on Twitter but only if you like Metal music, beautiful women, and action movies… you know, those types of things.
Synopsis: Three young martial arts masters emerge from the back streets of Hong Kong to help the powerless fight injustice.
- Comic Series: Apparently the film is based on a comic series titled Dragon and Tiger Heroes. I sure haven’t heard of it and I’m not exactly sure I want to seek it out based on the lackluster introduction by this movie.
- Come back Dragon: Poor little Dragon Wong (Donnie Yen) has left the martial arts school which is now run by his uncle. Or at least that is what I think happened. I can’t lie, I checked a few times during this movie and it was only my love of crazy martial arts scenes that kept me watching it. In the story, Dragon has left the school and is now a bodyguard for a young girl whose papa is some rich Triad dude. You can imagine that he has some enemies and those enemies end up taking him out and set Dragon on a path for some retribution. That all sounds pretty good actually but I’m skipping ahead just a pinch. Let’s back up a little.
- Tiger Wong has some moves: Not only does Nicholas Tse have some incredibly Asian hair, but he also has some pretty incredible kicks. Wong is the younger brother of Dragon and the heir to the academy now that Dragon is gone. The film uses flashbacks to remind us that these adult characters were once young boys. I have to be honest…I was just waiting for next throwdown.
- The case of the missing plaque: Everyone wants the Luocha Plaque and it really seems to cause a rift among the cats in this movie. Even to the point where Tiger, who is in possession of the plaque, fights off a couple dozen men from Dragon’s boss. Tiger gets some help from a young buck by the name of Turbo Shek. You can see from the pictures above that he has the same stylist as Tiger and they immediately bond. Turbo has some sweet nunchaku skills and they double team all of the henchmen until Dragon shows up and takes the plaque for himself.
- May I join you: Turbo rolls back to the Dragon Tiger Gate but the master won’t let him join up right away. He needs to learn to become a better martial artist. Whatever dude? Just wait till the bad guy shows up….
- Enter Shibumi: The black masked villain shows up at the Dragon Tiger Gate academy looking to face Dragon but instead ends up beating the shit out of Tiger, Turbo, and killing the Master. Shibumi then just strolls out of there like he’s not expecting someone to come after him. Hasn’t he ever seen a martial arts movie?
- Teach me. I can do it: Tiger and Turbo go off to some magical training mountain and learn some new moves. Then they sneak into Shibumi’s crib and challenge him. They do pretty well for a little while until Shibumi decides to step it up and kick the utter crap out of them. Lucky for them, Dragon is super pissed off and treats Shimumi like he’s just another punk on the block.
- Leopard: The new three best friends head back to the school and plan to restart it together. Turbo changes his name to Leopard because of all of the animal peer pressure and Dragon decides to stay and live up to his family name. It’s all happy happy in these parts.
The Verdict: I really dig many of the movies I’ve seen starring Donnie Yen going back to The Iron Monkey and Once Upon a Time in China 2. He has consistently put out good movies with great action scenes for 30 years now and only now seems to be getting his big break with American audiences. Dragon Tiger Gate had some really cool action sequences in it but I just couldn’t find myself caring about any of the characters. It did take me two views to finish it and I had a few distractions around me but I think I’ll stick to other Yen classics before I revisit this one again.