China, 1193. At the moment, the (this time transcribed as) Jin dynsty rules China, while the followers of the displaced Han are plotting a revolution.
Chang, the mayor of an unnamed city, is secretly on the side of the Han. Unfortuantely his secrecy doesn't amount to much and he gets himself killed. His replacement (Shih Jun), a man who betrayed the Han cause for the Jin years ago, doesn't hesitate and merrily slaughters the dead man's family and friends, too.
Some time later, a certain Miss Shang (Hsu Feng) comes to town. She is an agent of the Han, instructed to obtain some never defined "secret papers" that contain some plans of the rebels (written by General McGuffin, I suppose).
The swordswoman is as capable and determined as they come, yet even she will have great difficulties to obtain the papers, cut through a net of double-crosses or just to stay alive, especially when she makes an attempt on the life of the new mayor and learns the hard way that there is always someone better than yourself in the martial world.
A City Called Dragon easily invites the comparison to the films of King Hu, seeing that it was directed by an assistant director of the older film, utilizes some of Hu's core actors and (surely a sign of the times when this was made) film stock. This comparison is neither fair to Hu nor to City's director Larry Tu Chong-Hsun, though.
While Tu's film lacks much of the brilliance of Hu's work and Tu is not sharing Hu's interest in exploring the morality of his characters, the younger director is also trying to take his wuxia into a very different direction from Hu's.
His main influences seem to be Japanese chambara and the Spaghetti Western, so he merrily utilizes some typical visual techniques of both genres. The uncomfortably close close-up stands next to dialogue scenes shot from knee-height upwards, stands next to belly-cam (=the state of affairs when the camera mostly seems to focus on the actors' bellies) stands next to a very Japanese way of shooting fights with the camera positioned behind objects so that the actual fighting is taking place in the background.
At times, especially in the first half of the film, these techniques are surprisingly effective to heighten the film's tension, at other times they just seem to be weird for weirdness' sake (nothing I'm in the business of criticizing too heavily).
Speaking of fighting, friends of the wuxia film will probably be a little disappointed by the small amount of fights and their respective shortness (the latter again very chambara), as well as Tu's habit of being more interested in the framing of the fights than in the fighting itself.
Actually, there's not only not much fighting going on, there is relatively little else happening, even the melodrama is pared down, leaving the always wonderful lead actors with relatively little to do. The fact that the script isn't doing new-fangled stuff like character development surely is not helping.
Still, A City Called Dragon has something - Tu's angling for weird camera angles? the surprisingly awesome use of the colour brown? the "how the hell are we going to end this thing?" ending? - that presses me into a making it a minor recommandation for friends of Taiwanese martial arts movies.
In any case, it is a much better film than some of the quarry based fare that got churned out in Taiwan at the same time.
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