Just a few explanations

Rating: 10/10 (16 January 2001)

After reading all the critics from imdb, here is a few explanations. When I watch Matrix in London in summer 99, I have heard people in the cinema talking about how original and cool the actions in the film was. But as a person who grew up in Hong Kong, all those action in Matrix look familiar. The action designer or say choreography of Matrix Yuen Wo Ping (cantonese) had design action for bunch of WuXia or Kung Fu film in Hong Kong (the most famous was Jakie Chan's Snake arm and cat's craw). The Beijing born Yuen who himself is a WuXia novel fan, what he did was just put the WuXia style of duel in Matrix and showed it to the western audience, not the other way round, which CTHD as a Wuxia film itself copy from Matrix.
Lot of Westerners were annoyed by the flying scenes. Basically this is a WuXia film, not a kung fu film. Wu Xia novels is a genre of Chinese novel which usually have adventures, martial arts, fantasies and romance (sometime politics and history) elements. In this world there are different style of Kung Fu masters, from different schools/styles the most famous of these schools included Shao Lin Temple, Wudan (the school of Li Mu Bai), Er Mei, Wah San etc... all these school have different marshal arts secrets plus other special powers such as healing with Qi Kong etc. Usually these masters have different occupations such as monks, robbers, royal guards, leader of society, hermit etc. There are heroes (usually with sad endings) and villains. Sound more like in a fantasy world, ah? Yes, some Wuxia novels have historical background, but most are like fantasy. In a Hong Kong magazine, it tried to introduced the coming Tokien Lord of RIngs film to Chinese. It used the description 'A western style Wu Xia Film'. It probably give you an idea what a WuXia world likes.
The most famous WuXia Novelist in last few decades are Jin Rong and Koo Lung etc. Another thing need to clarify is these warrior cannot 'fly', they can according to these novels, out run horse in a short distance , leap up 30 feets and can jumping from trees to trees, run up walls etc. This technique is call qing gong which through but physical (running and jumping with lead tight on legs etc) and breathing/meditation can maximise human potential of inner power and reach a state which can control body weight. This technique can usually use for short period time due its explosiveness use up a lot of internal energy and that's why Jen couldn't leap/glide all the way back to down when she tried to save Li's life at the end. All this doesn't sound scientisfical I agree, however Wu Xia novels have exist in China for hundreds of years, long before Newton define law of gravity. Classical chinese Wu xia novelists had use their imagination and myth to wrote all these stories and defined all these speical techniques. Some of these technique are true, such as lightning sword fight, acrobatic kick etc (I have lived Beijing for two years and seen lots of these both in live show and documentry programme on tv) but some could be fictitious , just like spells, alchemy or wizary for Western people, only appears on films, novels and myths. It would be as unrealistic if not to contain those leaping/flying in a movie base on a 19th century Wu Xia movie as not having hobbits and magic in the Lord of Rings movie.
Be frank, the flying/leaping scenes in CTHD is not exaggerate at all for WuXia film standard, there are some Jet Li films directed by Tsui Hak in early 90s (such as Undefeatable East etc) had Kung Fu warrioirs leaping up hundred of feets cliff and really flying (not even gliding).
My rating for the film is 9/10. The action part of the film is not the best I have ever seen in a WuXia/Kung Fu movie (hardcore martial art fan should go for Jet Li's Once upon a time in China series) but the cinematography, acting and music is unparalell for any movie of this genre, the plot is well develop (I speak Mandarin and I found some of the subtitles were quite misleading especially the philosophical ideas from Li). Which made the movie just beautiful in a scene that it's more like an art than a wu xia film.