Dragon Tiger Gate (2006)

Two brothers battle it out over turf and a woman! Nah, but that was the plot I was afraid was headed my way when this movie began. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie based on a comic book. Even with the taped together plot, little character development, and a standard kung fu paradigm, the action scenes were fun and well developed enough to make me look over the rest and enjoy the ride.

There wasn’t much plot. Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse played two brothers from two mothers. The father’s relationship with the women was not explained. The mother of Dragon, took the oldest brother from the Gate when he was a child. Dragon soon became an orphan when his mother died. A triad leader, Kun, took him in and became a surrogate father to him. The biological father and mother of the younger brother, Tiger, disappeared and an “uncle” raised the youngest at the Gate. The uncle was played by an actor well known to kung fu fans, Yuen Wah.

Here is where I give props to this movie. The brothers, though in rival positions, did not become mortal enemies. A girl was involved with both brothers but no triangle developed. A typical kung fu story unfolded when Shibumi, the Big Bad, decided to take out Dragon’s boss/surrogate father, played by kung fu star Chen Kuan Tai. The bodies started stacking up at this point and the road back to brotherhood was opened up. The brothers were joined along the way by a nunchaku fighter, Turbo.

A liberal use of CGI and wire-work was used but not to the film’s detriment. DTG was like a super hero movie only using kung fu. I found the action scenes, designed by Donnie Yen, to be exciting and entertaining, certainly not realistic, but I grew up on Batman and Superman so this wasn’t much of a leap.

The sets and CGI sets were well done in this unknown time period with advanced phones and bell bottom jeans where cavernous criminal hideouts were buried deep beneath Hong Kong. The costumes were laughably bad. The hairdos were even worse. Poor Donnie had to go through the movie like a sheepdog with his hair down over his eyes most of the time. It did help obscure the fact he’s twenty years older in real life than the actor playing his slightly younger brother.

Donnie had a strong screen presence even with a thinly drawn character. Nicholas’ character seemed less well defined as the “good” brother, but he made the most with what he had to work with. Turbo (Shawn Yue) was largely extraneous and didn’t add a lot to the movie. It really felt like they should have concentrated on the brothers more. Though they didn’t share the screen much, Donnie and Nicholas had nice brotherly chemistry.

There were two female characters as love interests who were largely indistinguishable, one “good”, one “bad”. It was great to see old kung fu guys, Yuen Wah and Chen Guan Tai being used. It made my geeky kung fu heart happy.

If you can check your brain at the door and accept this movie for the comic book come to life that it is, you might find this movie entertaining, I know I did.

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