Jan 14 movie: House of Flying Daggers. I haven't checked, but I think this may be the first movie I've seen in a theater since Hero. Which is kind of funny. Apparently sweeping martial arts epics by Zhang Yimou are the only thing that will pry my butt off the couch and get me to a theater.
Before talking about the movie I have to mention the trailers. We saw one for Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which looked so good I actually applauded in the theater. His Shaolin Soccer was brilliant. And as Georg pointed out, since it's not being released by Miramax, there's a good chance it won't be chopped up to hell.
The bad news in movie trailers was Kingdom of Heaven. Which is a grand, heroic epic about the Crusades. You heard me, the Crusades. During a problematic (to say the least) war in the Middle East, Hollywood comes out with a movie glorifying the ugliest episode in Christian-Islamic history. We were both so appalled that our jaws literally dropped. How much lower can Hollywood sink? What's next, a heroic epic about the Conquistadors? The Albigensian Crusade? The Inquisition?
Okay, enough about that. Hopefully the Crusades movie will stink as badly as Alexander did, and sink as fast, and then I won't have to hear about it again. Now on to the movie we actually did see: House of Flying Daggers. It was excellent. Zhang Yimou is brilliant at sweeping epics. The visuals are amazing, the fight scenes are terrific, the cinematography is exquisite, and as usual his sense of color (not just to make the movie pretty but to carry meaning) is beyond compare. I never read reviews of movies I plan to see, but I would imagine that everyone is, or at least should be, talking about the two big set pieces: the "Echo Game" at the beginning, and the battle in the bamboo forest. Both scenes are amazing.
This felt like a romance set in an adventure story, unlike Hero which felt more like an adventure movie with a love story in it, if that makes sense. Which brings me to my only criticism. It's not really even a criticism, just my personal issue, which is that Zhang Ziyi leaves me cold. She just doesn't do it for me. She was okay in Crouching Tiger and Hero, where she only had to support the better actors. Maybe by the time she's Maggie Cheung's age, she'll be able to carry a movie of this scope. Too bad she can't do it now. (In my opinion of course.)
Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro were both good, very convincing. (I'd seen them both in other movies but didn't remember them until I looked them up on imdb.com.) But the two of them can't hold up the triangle on their own when Zhang is in the middle doing nothing for me. In what should have been a heartbreaking tragic ending, I just sat there thinking. "Wow. Nice scene. Too bad Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh are too old for this part. Whatever happened Brigitte Lin?"
Which is not to say that I didn't like the movie. I loved it. Just that I was emotionally disengaged; the romance story didn't draw me in.
2 Comments
Once upon a time, the idea of Ridley Scott directing a movie about the Crusades would have made me all fluttery and excited. Over the years, he's fallen out of my pantheon of "must see" directors--possibly because he's slowly converging with his untalented brother Tony in a sort of Dead Ringers parasitism.
On the other hand, I think it would be possible to make an excellent film about the Crusades, even in today's political environment. Remember that Scott is very anti-authority; he made 1492, an anti-imperialist Columbus film; and he's got Tripoli, an Arab-sympathetic film about the American war with the Barbary pirates, in the queue.
The fact that the screenwriter is completely new--according to the IMDB, this is his first film--makes me wonder if he's some hot discovery, or if he's just a new hack.
I suppose it's possible that the trailer is trying to sell a complex look at the Crusades as simplistic ah-the-glories-of-war epic... on the other hand, Gladiator.