The inevitable instinct is to compare FLYING DAGGERS with HERO and it suffers greatly in comparison. With HERO, I knew what was at stake for those characters. There was urgency in their situation right from the beginning. I was invested in their dilemma. In FLYING DAGGERS, I was lost pretty early on. Who are these people? What do they want? Why should we care? Who’s hassling them? We don’t find out any of these answers until the big revelation 75 minutes into the movie. I’m sorry, but that's too long a time to make me wait, a case of way too little way too late. I just didn’t care anymore.

Making matters worse is the miscasting of Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro, neither of whom had any great chemistry with Zhang Ziyi. I normally don’t mind either actor—they’re okay, but they’d never make my list of favorite HK actors--but they work best in ensemble casts with other charismatic HK performers, e.g. INFERNAL AFFAIRS, EXECUTIONERS—HEROIC TRIO 2. Neither brought much to their characters here. Poor Zhang Ziyi had to carry the entire two-hour movie on her petite little shoulders. And what great shoulders they are, too. But she’s just too burdened by her lackluster co-stars. She needed at least one strong male lead here to play off and she just didn’t have one. And it’s a fatal blow to the movie.

As for the action: well, by the second loooonnnnnnngggg tracking shot of the daggers flying through the air and making loop-de-loops and pas-de-deux’s and somersaults and right turns, etc., I was ready to bolt. This was just tiresome. It was all for show. It’s a gimmick, and a bad one at that. I kept thinking how in BUTTERFLY AND SWORD, Michelle Yeoh could slice, dice and impale six dudes in the time it takes one knife to reach its target in this movie.

As for the politics? Well, I think Grady had a point (if I can remember it accurately)--Zhang Yimou is clearly trying to make a commercial movie and I guess he succeeded. But if that's all he was trying, the result comes up empty and shallow. If the next one isn't better, he's gonna lose the ground he gained with HERO.

HERO is to HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS as ASHES OF TIME is to EAGLE SHOOTING HEROES. (And I’m probably being too generous to FLYING DAGGERS.)

Here's another one: HERO is to HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS as KILL BILL VOL. 1 is to KILL BILL VOL. 2.

At the screening I caught there were trailers for ONG BAK—THE THAI WARRIOR and UNLEASHED, the Jet Li movie formerly titled DANNY THE DOG. There was also a trailer for Clint Eastwood’s MILLION DOLLAR BABY, which seemed somewhat similarly themed in that company.



MILD SPOILER SPACE for HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS








Did anyone but me notice that Andy Lau is essentially playing the same character he played in INFERNAL AFFAIRS but transposed to China 1100 years earlier?

Some interesting observations, Brian. Personally I thought that FLYING DAGGERS, while inferior to HERO, was still immensely enjoyable, and I thought that a lot of this was to do with Zhang Ziyi's performance and the outrageously colourful cinematography. Oddly enough, your opinion that Ziyi's performance is hampered by that of the two male leads is virtually the polar opposite of most other criticisms I have read of the acting in the movie. Most reviews seem to place the blame entirely on Ziyi's shoulders: a shame, because while she was the weakest component of HERO I think she was very good here, even if her character is very inconsistently written.

I just saw it and I really liked it, myself. It's not HERO, which in my opinion is a masterpiece. It's a high-end take on pulp material, basically. But I personally really really really like high-end takes on pulp material (one of the reasons I liked COLLATERAL so much), and for what it is, it's very fine.

I thought Zhang Ziyi was marvelous, and of course the movie is one big valentine to her. I didn't have a problem with the male leads: I agree that they're not especially charismatic, but Zhang Yimou seems to replicate here, in part, the neat trick I think he pulled in HERO, where the protagonist of the story isn't really the viewpoint character. (Although we're in large part with the men, the story is really Ziyi's.) Given that the movie is also a celebration of Ziyi, it makes sense that nothing should compete for our attention with her. Now, you can fairly say that wasn't a good way to go about structuring it: I can only say it didn't bother me.

I liked the fight scenes tremendously, myself, although they're not as innovative as the stuff I saw in the HERO.

I very much liked all the "unmaskings" in the story, although a couple plot twists were predictable. I especially liked how the story looks to be going one way, turns out to be going another, and then ends in a way I didn't really expect at all, but was still satisfying. Some themes from HERO seem to be repeated, including the general fragility of love and something that might be called "winning without fighting" or "victory achieved in other ways".

I didn't read the HOUSE political thread here too closely. I can say there's nothing much I saw by way of politics, except maybe something like "a pox on both houses". Which is sort of the theme of HERO, too, although it's more nuanced and complicated there. I have no problems with Yimou making a commerical film; it's Romantic with a capital R, Romantic in the Dumas/Sabatini kind of way people seem to have forgotten how to make nowadays.

I saw HOUSE in my local arthouse; I saw HERO at my local multiplex. Which is funny because the two should be reversed: I think HERO is a very arthousey take on the wuxia film, while I think HOUSE is pretty accessible. I would think all sorts of people would like it, not just the arthouse crowd: even as it was, I saw some people at today's showing who obviously aren't normally arthouse movie people. More proof that these kinds of movies can work in the States.

doug