The Fate of Lee Khan once again shows off his impeccable talent for creating drama out of a single setting. An espionage thriller with echoes of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, the film chronicles a tense showdown between warriors on different sides of a civil war in a rural inn. Hu fills the first half of the film with a healthy dose of humor as he introduces the characters, ratcheting up the suspense as new guests arrive with unknown intentions. Unlike Hu's previous martial art epics, The Fate of Lee Khan is mostly filmed indoors, giving the director room to display his mastery of mise-en-scene and to experiment with action choreography confined to close quarters.