Give me Jackie Chan any day

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2001)

Rarely have I been so disappointed in a film. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had been highly praised in all the national and international reviews available, leading a moderately full cinema last Friday night to expect an interesting plot, exciting fight scenes and visual artistry. Instead, the audience soon became restless.
My most damning criticism has to be that for the first time ever I found a film dull within minutes of its opening. Our row of seats consumed unheard-of quantities of chocolate and popcorn to compensate for the obvious lack of tension. We remained uninterested in the fate of the protagonists throughout and considered leaving the film before the end but stayed on because we did not fancy braving the sub-zero temperature outside.
Having seen several older films of genre on television, I had looked forward to the first fight scene. The audience collectively leant back to enjoy the fun, watched for a while and then started sniggering. Not only are the fight scenes not particularly well choreographed, they are astonishingly badly filmed. Instead of filming them like dance sequences, i.e. as full body shots, the film's makers give us small snippets of arms flashing in front of faces. There are countless multiple somersaults ending in about a second of slowing-down, like a rocket going into reverse acceleration, where the special effects people have obviously had to play around in order to have the actor appear to land on the ground and not several inches about it. The "best" bit in the entire film was when a character flew off, body rigid, one arm stretched out above his head. At least half a dozen voices in the cinema, including mine, simultaneously cried out "Superman."
Give me Jackie Chan any day!