During a Criterion sale earlier this summer, I picked up Dragon Inn, a 1967 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. I had seen Hu's Come Drink with Me (1966) from Shaw Brothers Studio and liked it so I decided to give this one a try.
The titular Dragon Gate Inn is in sparse populated border area in northwest 15th-century China. There, three martial artists become involved in a plot by the power-hungry eunuch, Cao Shaoqin, and his ruthless Eastern Depot agents to assassinate the exiled family of a minister who was framed for treason and executed.
Hu's desert setting, design of the inn, and framing of the landscape recall Hollywood Westerns and perhaps Italian ones. His approach to fight choreography and fight scenes are swift and close quarters, at least until the final battle, more like Japanese chanbara films of the era than the wirework and dance like choreography of a lot of wuxia.
The toning of down of some (some!) of the eccentricities of the wuxia genre, and the Western style setup of a group of competent strangers defending an isolated location against the badguys makes this a good "gateway" wuxia to show someone new to the genre.
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