Yes, I must admit I had thought highly of the venerable Zhang Yimou and with an almost stellar cast leading the fray (Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kanechiro and Andy Lau), I was blindly confident that his latest wuxia epic would be nothing less than excellent. And excellent was the cinematography, the breath-taking stunt montages, luscious backdrops and the amazing depth of detail bestowed upon almost every single piece of prop; alas, the story, plot and scripting left much to be desired. I walked into the cinema hoping to experience a theatre-event much like the subtly-gorgeous Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but walked out feeling as if I had witnessed a shallow travesty. The only plaudits worth handing out are to the commendable actors who must have attempted their utmost best to make their corny lines seem as believable as possible. Otherwise, the drama and human tension is always overwrought, the fight scenes always a little too much, a little too flashy. While last year's Hero was almost unfathomable in its abstractness, House of Flying Daggers is, at the other extreme, painfully blatant in making its point.
A director as experienced and adroit as Yimou would have been well-aware how ludicrous his latest offering is, yet this movie is almost dead-serious through-out. Perhaps, after being snubbed by the Oscars last year after making a thinking-man's movie, he had decided to be brashly one-dimensional this time round to highlight or elucidate a certain point. But what that point is exactly, only Yimou himself knows... This movie leaves a bad aftertaste in the mouth but then it certainly is a visual feast for the eyes.
my ratings -- 4/5 stars for art direction but 2.5/5 stars for story.
