While the martial-arts movie is sometimes viewed as the Asian counterpart to the western, Dragon Inn is so packed with choreographed movement [that] a more appropriate comparison might be the musical, a genre in which the physicality of a performer can seem in the same instant to be both the narrative force driving a scene and just another element in a director’s grand visual design. With no preexisting interest or expertise in martial arts, Hu conceived his fight sequences as spectacles akin to the dancing and acrobatics he would have seen in the Beijing opera productions he frequented as a child.
— Andrew Chan (Criterion)
Synopsis: China, year 1457. The Minister of Defense is executed, and his children are sentenced to exile by order of the tyrannical Tsao. Fearful of future revenge from the young people, Tsao sends cruel soldiers to murder them, but a brave group of swordsmen can change the course of the battle at the Dragon Inn.