I mean, who cares about Dragon's hot-cold love affair with Shibumi's daughter if the filmmakers can't be bothered to flesh her out? Who cares about Tiger's budding relationship with Xiaoling if she's as thin as Nicole Richie after a four-week meth binge? Who cares about Turbo's limp kung fu if we know absolutely nothing about him? Though I rarely say this when it comes to goofy martial arts movies, I do believe Dragon Tiger Gate could have benefited from another fifteen minutes or so of good old-fashioned character development. I mean, if you really want us to care about your melodramatic booble-baggle, give us some characters we can relate to. Make them human. Flesh them out. Otherwise, you're just wasting our time. And yours. But mostly ours.

Silly scripts and forgettable characters aside, Dragon Tiger Gate does sport a number of breathtaking fight sequences, choreographed by none other than Mr. Donnie Yen himself, a man who will not hesitate to stick himself in the middle of a fray that requires him to pose, posture, and mug for the camera. Granted, Yen's a good-looking guy with skills to spare, but do we need a dozen or so shots of him in too-cool slow-motion stances after wiping the floor with four dozen non-descript bad guys? Not really.

However, seeing as how Yen's the man responsible for piecing together some truly amazing fights, I'll forgive him this trespass. Once. I mean, if I had the opportunity to look really hot while kicking some cinematic ass, I'd probably do so, too. How remarkably sad. Anyway, the action is truly the only reason you'll waste your time with this one. It's a good reason,of course, but you'll have to wade through some clunky acting and lots of unintentionally hilarious dialogue in the meantime. Thankfully, the movie is well-paced and relatively short, leaving little room for lag. A few yawns, maybe, but not a lot of lag.

I'm definitely not saying that Dragon Tiger Gate is a bad movie. What I am saying, however, is you could do a lot better than this if you're in the mood for some Yip/Yen madness. SPL was a gritty return to pure Hong Kong action, a film that took its time developing the individuals you were to care about. And by the time Yen and Hung lock horn in the final act, you felt that raw intensity in the pit of your stomach. Dragon Tiger Gate, meanwhile, is just another flashy martial arts picture stuffed with attractive guys and gals fighting for no good reason.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it's nice to have a good reason.