The Fate of Lee Khan (4 Stars)

"The Fate of Lee Khan" is a fascinating film. It isn't without its faults, and it certainly isn't the straightforward martial-arts adventure its title might suggest. There are relatively few fight scenes. For most of its running time, the director King Hu confines his characters to an inn, where they watch one another, deceive one another and gradually reveal their hidden allegiances.

The setting is claustrophobic. The inn becomes a kind of chessboard, or rather a Go board. A brief scene in which Go is actually being played provides a clue to what Hu is doing. The various characters are pieces being positioned around one another, probing for weaknesses and waiting for an opportunity to strike. A seemingly innocent conversation or apparently insignificant movement may have strategic importance. When violence finally erupts, it feels less like a separate action sequence than the inevitable consequence of moves that have been played out earlier.

The first forty minutes are devoted largely to gambling, cheating and various forms of deception. It eventually becomes clear that this is relevant: Hu is establishing a world in which nobody can be taken at face value and everyone is playing a game against everyone else. In my opinion, he takes too long to make the point. Twenty minutes might have been sufficient. The gambling is entertaining enough, but the film could have reached its central intrigue sooner.

Once the main game begins, however, the leisurely pace becomes an advantage. The confined setting allows suspicion to build. We're constantly wondering who knows what, who is working for whom and which apparently insignificant character may turn out to be important. Character development is sacrificed to this strategy. The waitresses, even Angela Mao's pickpocket character, are more functional than fully developed personalities. But within Hu's design, they're pieces on the board, and their importance lies in how they are positioned and what they do.

The women are particularly striking. "The Fate of Lee Khan" contains an extraordinary collection of strong female characters: the innkeeper, the waitresses, the resourceful pickpocket and Lee Khan's formidable sister. They aren't merely decorative companions to male heroes. They're fighters, schemers and active participants in the central conflict. Indeed, much of the strategic intelligence in the film comes from the women.

This is part of a broader tradition in Hong Kong wuxia cinema, but here it's unusually pronounced. King Hu had a particular gift for creating female warriors who were capable without losing their individuality or femininity. In "The Fate of Lee Khan", the women are not simply fighting alongside the men; they are helping to determine the game itself.

The historical background adds another layer. The story is fictional, but it's set in 1366, during the final years of Mongol Yuan rule in China. The struggle between the Yuan authorities and the Chinese rebels was real, and the period immediately preceded the establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368. Hu takes that genuine historical situation and turns it into an intimate fictional contest inside one inn. A vast political struggle is reduced to a handful of people manoeuvring against one another over a strategically important object.

The martial arts, when they arrive, are beautifully integrated into this structure. They are not the whole point of the film. The real action has already been taking place in the conversations, the deceptions and the positioning of the characters. The fights are the moments when the game finally becomes physical.

I wouldn't call "The Fate of Lee Khan" a perfect film. It's too leisurely in places, and some of its characters are deliberately sketchier than they might have been in a more conventional story. But perfection isn't really what makes it memorable. It's the unusual conception of the film:  the oppressive inn, the constantly shifting alliances, the strong women, the games within games and the sense that everyone is manoeuvring several moves ahead.

It is, above all, fascinating.