Metacritic reviews

Tsui Hark's film is the veteran director's chance to let his imagination run riot in the context of a high-budget, 3D IMAX production.

Silly, distracting, and undeniably entertaining.

The story has been brought to the screen twice before (once by Tsui), but this version is the first in IMAX 3-D, which is the main reason to see it.

Surprisingly old-fashioned. It seems to be having an argument with itself: the dazzling but often antiseptic immersiveness of the viewing experience is countered by storytelling suffused with nostalgia for a simpler, messier, livelier period in Chinese film.

A chunky spectacle, to be sure – overstuffed with plot and characters - but at times, it's an insanely entertaining one.

Flying Swords might not live up to the promise of Detective Dee, Hark's recent comeback, but it does deliver frequently and always when it counts most.

The 3D is terrific in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, but helmer Tsui Hark's costume actioner -- the first Chinese-lingo movie shown in the stereoscopic Imax format -- is let down by two-dimensional characters.

Tsui Hark's films aren't famous for their coherence, but Flying Swords of Dragon Gate is such a wantonly incomprehensible experience that it occasionally feels like an epic piece of outsider art.

Despite the presence of Jet Li, only the last half-hour of this chatty epic truly flies.

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate isn't as much fun as the director's previous film – the wondrous "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame."