Dragon Tiger Gate

Dragon Tiger Gate [Blu Ray]: Two step-brothers and a random come together and fight the evil Lousha Gate to save their martial arts school. Based on a Chinese comic (Oriental Heroes), there’s some sweet-ass stylish opening credits, and more generally the acting’s decent by comic adaptation standards. The story’s a bit overcooked and strays pretty deeply into the field of cheese with the metaphors, dreams and visions – which gets a little tedious. What makes this watchable is Donnie Yen’s jaw-dropping action choreography (and 14 year old emo girl’s haircut!), particularly the 2x restaurant scenes. The baseball field and gate bit are also fairly good – although the final boss fight has far too much SFX, which loses the innovative and live action feel of the earlier battles. The Blu Ray picture’s good, and vibrant when it needs to be, the HD sound is loud, proud, punchy and clean. Although the story’s not up to much, Dragon Tiger Gate is some harmless action fun.

Score: 7/10