House of Flying Daggers (十面埋伏)

Cast: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau and Song Dandan
Director: Zhang Yimou
Synopsis:
Near the end of the Tang Dynasty, police deputies Jin (Kaneshiro) and Leo (Lau) tangle with Mei (Zhang), a dancer suspected of having ties to a revolutionary faction known as the House of Flying Daggers. Enraptured by her, the deputies concoct a plan to save her from capture, and Jin leads her north in what becomes a perilous journey into the unknown as Jin and Mei unexpectedly fall in love with each other. (taken from movies.yahoo.com. revised by yours truly)

Review:
Since its release in 2002, no chinese movie has fascinated the world so much than Zhang Yimou martial arts epic, Hero. Fresh off its success, Zhang then went on to make another martial arts epic and the anticipation for this movie can't be more salivating. The promising cast include popular asian actors Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau and initially, the late Anita Mui. Many of the Hero crew is back including action director Ching Siu-Tung and Oscar-Winning costume designer Emi Wada (although DP Chris Doyle is sadly not). The only one who is not back is MiramAxe (thank god). I am a big fan of both Hero and Andy Lau. When I heard the news of Zhang Yimou following up Hero with another kungfu movie with Andy Lau in it, I was in for a treat. I followed the development of this movie, House of Flying Daggers as closely as I could up to its cannes premiere. Apart from the costumes worn, I felt that it was going to be a great movie, and the critics's reaction in Cannes could only support that. With anticipation this high, a lot of times the movie can turn out to be a disappointment. This turns out to be the case for this movie.

Unlike Hero (i'm going to repeat these 2 words), which was some kind of ambitious Rashomon-like, somewhat philosophical and very political film (and I would argue a perfect deconstruction of Martial Arts genre), House of Flying Daggers is made with more traditional genre: tragic romance drama, a genre which reminds us of Hero's predecessor, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (another reason to raise expectation). While I have never watched any Zhang's movie except Hero, he has a reputation of making good human drama film in the past. Hence, I was confident that he could create a movie as good as, if not better than, CTHD. However, that is clearly not the case with this movie. Firstly, unlike Hero, HOFD has a bad script (by the same writers of Hero: Wang Bin, Li Feng and Zhang himself). The simple tragic love triangle story was accompanied by a complex but ridiculous and ultimately meaningless spy and counterspy plot. However, the main problem with the script is how it handles the love story itself: it is as tragic as the soap opera that you watch daily on TV. The main plot just wasn't interesting and frankly, most movies with this basic problem is pretty much doomed to fail. I read that Hero script took 3 years to complete and the script for HOFD was written during the production of Hero, one can clearly see the difference in quality.

If there is a strong belief that I hold can save a movie is the acting of the cast. Great acting, however, was nowhere to be foundin this film. Unlike Hero, which has great actors such as Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, and a great introductory performance by Chen Daoming, we are offered only three questionably good actors. Takeshi Kaneshiro gives his best performance I have ever seen - a decent performance; this is not saying much since I have always thought of him as Keanu Reeves of Asia. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of his too. He has good charisma, screen presence and the "cool factor" that no one else have, however, watching him trying to emote is another matter altogether (watch Returner to see what I mean). Zhang Ziyi is Zhang Ziyi, she is a good actress and her performance here is ok, but she has not really impressed since she shot to fame in CTHD; at least she is not stuck in a useless role like the one in Hero. Most dissapointing however, is Andy Lau. As a big fan, I was hoping that he would kick ass because this is a great chance for him to capture some respectful international attention that has been eluding him (ie there are other talented actors from HK other than Tony LCW). However, having watched some of his films, I think it is safe to say that his talent is limited. Andy has given great performances before and I believe that he can do that whenever he is with a director (like Johnnie To) who could tap that good actor out of him. Zhang happens to be not that kind of director and as a result, Andy delivers only an okay performance. In some emotional scenes, it looks like he is trying very hard to add some emotional depth to his character that was just never there (because of the script) but ends up looking like he is overacting (in fact, it kind of reminds me of Takeshi's acting in Returner). I wouldn't say that the performances of the three principal actors are bad, but they are just fairly good at best and that does not save the movie from the poor script.

Shortcomings aside, there are things that actually managed to make the movie nearly worth watching. Unlike the cast and the script, Zhang the director is still in his element here and what a great show he gave. The martial arts sequence are still just as spectacular as those found in Hero. But that is not the only thing. Like Hero (I say this only once), he was assisted with great production values and there is no difference in here. The sceneries and visuals are really beautiful to watch; the musical score although somewhat a little bombastic, is still sorrowfully emotional. One scene stood out: when Leo and Jin prepares to duel in an open field surrounded by trees, the seasons change from spring to winter and what happens on the screen during it can't be described and has to be seen; it is that beautiful. However, as great the production values are, they could not make this a good movie. Like the normally complained special effects blockbusters of Hollywood, all these great production values could only do so much. The movie looks beautiful, the music is great, but somehow when I watch the lovers crying and confronting each other, I feel nothing ... it's so empty and meaningless. It's not a pleasant feeling and that's why I can't reccomend this movie. Hopefully, if Zhang were to make another wuxiapian, he could make a better one because if there is one thing that does not let him down in this movie, it's his imagination.

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This review is written as a response to overwhelmingly positive reviews that has been given to this film by western/ english press - I think that It would get Oscar nomination / win soon. I have met many people who have similar feelings about the movie as I do. Therefore, this film has become really overrated, in my opinion. Well, at least Andy Lau has gained some attention.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5



House of falling daggers