Good in parts, but needed tightening up.

Rating: 5/10 (16 January 2001)

There's a lot of positive things to be said about this film. There's a lot of very good cinematography, the choreography is superb and all the actors are believable. I even believe that the basic story line was good enough. Unfortunately the overall structure of the film let's it all down.
My biggest problem is the central interlude which gives the back story of the royal daughter. This 20-25 minutes of film occurs just at the wrong point. The main story is just getting going, you're just getting to grips with all the strange things which are going on, you're interest is peaked. Then suddenly we're transported to a different time and place and you're left hanging.
Yes, it serves as an excuse to see some great landscapes, but it just broke the story in two for me. Either this should have been at the start of the film (but that would have been a very slow start), or cut completely. Indeed, the character who is introduced by this sequence is pretty auxiliary to the tale (I think he's there to give some reasons for the other characters actions, but it's not necessary), and I don't think the film as a whole would have suffered if he had never been there.
Ang Lee needs to learn that in a film that was essentially a crime thriller (Who did it? How? Where are they hiding?) you need to keep the audience focused, otherwise they loose interest. At least that's what happened in the theatre I went to see it in.
I've seen the word masterpiece used in conjunction with this film. I would say that those people are mistaking bad story telling with 'an intellectual experience'. Just because something is different, doesn't make it good. My view is that the story just wasn't told very well and should have had much more aggressive editing.