Continuing the adventures at Dragon Gate Inn, a royal servant has become pregnant and escaped from the palace. A rebel swordsman is attacking east and west government officials. A fake, copycat swords-woman is impersonating this man and saves the servant from the government. Again, opposing groups meet at the ill-fated Dragon Gate Inn right before a sandstorm. The inn owner and her tattooed thugs are hanging around because the sandstorm will uncover a lost city full of gold.
This probably looked better in 3D at the theater. It looked fake and too CG on my computer screen. The plot was as convoluted as most new wuxia flicks. I think that too much stuff and too many people were written in. There was definitely no shortage of extras. Some of the scenes showed armies and gangs that looked real. The few main characters were a little difficult to keep track of. I watched this half last night and half this morning, so that may have something to do with it. Again, I liked the inn owner most. This time she had face tattoos and came onto a shy man. Coming in as second favorite character was her monster giant warrior dude. Both of these characters were acted very expressively. The dialogue seemed standard. There was some type of riddle password about the steeles which are the namesake of Dragon Gate. Different groups knew different information about this and about the mazes and traps of the lost city. I was disappointed in how little time was spent at this set. One would think that the lost city would get some serious screen time, but no. All of the sets costumes and locations looked amazing (as expected of the genre and date). The pacing felt rushed all the way through. The only scene that really felt on time was people arriving at the inn. Camera-work was as expected: fast cuts, lots of camera movement. I think that there were more extreme long shots in this to make use of 3D camera/projector technologies. Composition on the slower shots looked very professional. There were too many special effects. I'm good with Hong Kong wire flying, green screen, digital magic spells being cast, etc. When I say it's too much special effects, you really know it's over the top. The audio seemed to be mixed a little bit low, but proportionally well. IMDb lists a rating of 6/10 and Rotten Tomatoes lists 69% Tomatometer with 48% Audience Score for an average of 59%. Even though the pacing was too quick and there were too many special effects, I think that score is a little low. I rate it adequate. If you're watching Dragon Gate films, you might as well see them all, right?
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