House of Flying Daggers

Zhang Yimou couldn't think of a more appropriate title for his second wuxia movie. With his obsession of camera-tracking every single dagger that cuts through the air and the relatively flat plot and one-dimensional characters, the daggers are definitely the stars of the movie.

While Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau and Zhang Ziyi did not disappoint in their acting, the plot totally spoilt it. Takeshi came across as been merely a testosterone charged lustful youth, Zhang Ziyi a frivolous lover who somehow seemed to invite the guy next to her to tear off her clothes and Andy Lau renditing the same role he had in infernal affairs albeit wielding a sabre instead of a pistol and garbed in Tang Dynasty clothing instead of a suit (someone ought to tell him the danger of been typecast).

After watching the movie, one is hard pressed to figure out what genre Zhang Yimou had in mind when directing this movie. As a wuxia movie, it fell flat completely with its lack of a "hero" character, someone who stands for justice and honour, hence the word xia in the genre wuxia. As a love story, it is unconvincing and the title of the movie reflected nothing of it. Its dismal failure to pull the heartstring of the audience can be seen in the reaction of the crowd that I watched with, in the final scene when Takeshi was holding Zhang while she expired (finally); they laughed, and very loudly at that. This was not least due to Zhang's untimely resurrection from been buried in the snow and even to stand up and negotiate with Andy Lau after been left for dead for a very long while before killing herself in a most unromantic way. There were other illogical scenes as well, like the scene where the elite constables from the imperial court were chasing Zhang and Takeshi down a bamboo forest by leaping from tree to tree and hurling a barrage of sharpened bamboo stakes at them. Given the continuous artillery the guards had to keep up at the besieged couple and that the guards were leaping from tree to tree at the same time, one wondered how on earth they found the time to break and sharpen so many bamboo stakes before flinging them. Of course, the way that the guards climbed and leapt from the trees reminded one distinctively of some natural denziens of the treetops.

At the start of the movie, it was narrated that the movie was set in the Tang Dynasty and that the House of Flying Daggers was a group devoted to opposing the corrupt Imperial Court, who robbed officials to save the poor. This elaborate telling of the background led one to expect the plot to tie in with some historical aspects of the Tang Dynasty or at the least to showcase the good-doing of the House of Daggers. Yet till the end of the movie, the only use that Zhang Yimou had for the Tang Dynasty background was a reference for the kind of costume to garb his characters in. There was also nothing in the actions of members of the House of Flying Daggers to reinforce the idea conveyed at the beginning that these are the Chinese Robin Hoods. They could well have been the mafia or drug traffickers and that wouldn't have made a difference.

That been said, there are still some plus points for the movie. For anyone familiar with Zhang Yimou's style, the rich colours and breathtaking scenaries are nothing new of course. The fighting style was on the whole very distinctively chinese as compared to many wuxia shows nowadays. The strokes were still a far cry from the authenticity of classics like The Shaolin Temple starring a very youthful Jet Lee but except for the final showdown between Andy Lau and Takeshi which had the characteristics of a bar room brawl, the style was less at least more oriental.

Not a movie worth $8.50 definitely. My rating: 4.5/10