Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 18: Wed Jan 18

Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.25pm


This film (also screening January 8th) is part of the Wuxia Selectrospective at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find the details of all the films here.

Chicago Reader review:
Moviegoers may be most familiar with this 1967 martial arts classic as the feature being watched in a crumbling movie palace by an assortment of lost souls in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003). Here’s your chance to experience its pop grandeur unadulterated, in a new digital restoration. During the Ming dynasty, a wicked eunuch of the imperial court kills the defense minister and orders the man’s grown son and daughter exiled to a remote outpost, where assassins at the title inn await their arrival and a heroic soldier traveling incognito hopes to save them. Director King Hu makes kinetic use of the widescreen frame: the action is dominated by gonzo knife throwing, and arrow fire has seldom felt so lethal. The balletic, rhythmically thrilling swordplay and Hu’s novel employment of the daughter as a fearsome combatant would strongly influence such millennial martial-arts dramas as Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (2004).
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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