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It sits in the rock-strewn desert near the Tartar frontier, the titular tavern, and is gradually recognized as the Petrified Forest diner. The overture outlines Ming Dynasty skullduggery, a slain minister's exiled family is targeted by a treasonous courtier's secret police. The vicious agents make themselves at home in the isolated hostelry, one of them seizes a sword out of the trunk that's just been lugged by servants and slaughters them for asking for a tip: "Give them a good burial and make me some tea," grins the commander (Miao Tien). In strolls a stranger (Shih Chun), "just a loafer" who casually reveals his acrobatic prowess by tossing a bowl from one table to another without spilling a single noodle. The rebel in boyish drag (Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan) and her blustering brother (Hsieh Han) are on the heroic side, so is the innkeeper who was once a general (Tsao Chien). "You're fond of meddling in others' affairs?" "Only when justice is at stake." A ripping elaboration of Come Drink with Me, augmenting King Hu's mastery in threading the muscular with the ethereal. Panoramic exteriors contrast with the claustrophobic confines of the outpost, where the calm before the storm is personified by a very nervous waiter carrying a cup of poisoned wine. (A quick gag points up the suppleness of the technique, the lithe warrioress holds the camera on the edge of her blade, where a small candle is also balanced.) The villain is an asthmatic eunuch (Bai Ying) announced with a discordant blast of Chinese opera brass, seen from the back in a choice shot with a parasol briefly eclipsing the descending boom as his retinue strides toward the arrow-studded lodge. Graced with morning mist on a mountainside road, the showdown is sculptured with castration jibes and increasingly bloodied robes, then resolved with humorous abruptness. "Take the shortcut." Somersaulting icons one day, specters in Tsai Ming-liang's crumbling theater the next. With Han Ying-Chieh, Ko Hsiao Pao, Man Chung-San, and Wen Tien.
--- Fernando F. Croce |