During the Ming dynasty, the corrupt imperial eunuchs are using their powers to wrongly accuse government officials and taking over the country. The eunuchs are divided into the old East Bureau and the newer West Bureau as the emperor's all knowing spies. Zhao Huai'an (Jet Li) defeats the dictatorial leaders of the East Bureau. The West Bureau led by Yu is more skilled and chases after Zhao Huai'an. The Emperor's chief concubine Wan refuses to let any other maids get pregnant. Pregnant maid Su Huirong escapes and gets rescued by a Zhao Huai'an impostor. Zhao Huai'an sees his impostor and Su Huirong chased by the West Bureau. They head out west and end up in the desert outpost Dragon Gate during a sand storm. There they find bandits, Mongols, crooks, thieves, and rumors of a hidden treasure.This starts off as a battle between Zhao Huai'an and eunuch Yu. However the story keeps adding characters. It's not incomprehensible but it is a disjointed way of story telling. The movie has plenty of CGI fights and big scenes. I'm willing to go with it until the various groups gather at Dragon Gate and I'm forced to more or less give up. It becomes a mess and I stop caring about half the people in this movie.

Sorry but I was very disappointed with this movie. I do like Jet Li and I think he is an excellent Martial Artist, but you wouldn't know it from this film. Set three years after Dragon Inn, the innkeeper Jade has disappeared and a new inn has risen from the ashes but occupied by marauders, who hope to find lost city and treasure buried in the desert somewhere.The way the film was directed made it overly confusing to follow and as others have said the film relies much to much on CGI. The fight sequences were over long and at times ridiculous. I know some Chinese films over use wire work and CGI but this one took it even further to show the characters flying through the air having and having amazing powers so that a flick of the hand could cause inanimate objects to do whatever they wanted. Yes despite these amazing powers they were in the end killed by relatively simple means. The sword fights were also ridiculous with a never ending stream of knives appearing from nowhere.This is NOT a Martial Arts film but rather a fantasy more like watching a Video game than a movie.It is a shame because there were some good actors in this film, but the director seems to have let things go to his head and lost the plot.This is one DVD for the bargain basket I am afraid.

I find this film much better than the original. In the original the fights were too weak and fake. Here the fights have more power, although the one in the Cyclone was weakened by not so good special effects. Still I must completely disagree with a reviewer who almost destroyed this movie with his comment about too many special effects. "Thanks" to him I was imagining something terrible and I am glad to have watched the film! I think who saw the "New Dragon Inn" will enjoy this film more, because he will know some of the story, and of the Characters. There are better films of course, but this is a good movie and absolutely deserves to be watched, if you like intrigue and martial arts. Characters are good, the plot is not great but IMO better than in the original, and the style of fights, even if not the best, is for me better than in the original, because more appropriate to what I started to like since when I watched Hero. I would give it 7.5 if I could.

Jet Lee did some great stuff over the years. This is not one of those. Plot is worse than Disney.Entire movie has 0 decent martial art choreography. This is NOT a martial arts movie! What it is, is nonstop unrealistically stupid, badly done, CGI.Part I hated the most is that there is better flow of moves in Batman Origins Video Game than in this movie. Good for Batman Origins, very, very bad for unmemorable Dragon Gate.These is far too much posing, stopping, pausing, centering on badly acted facial expressions ... I really do not like Anime, so maybe that is part of the problem here, but this thing felt like C-budget Live Action Anime Roleplay by fans who are not really actors and have no professional experience.