A sublime, almost OPERATIC Chinese fable.

Rating: 9/10 (26 February 2001)

My partner & I went to see this film yesterday at the Marquee Cinemas here in Charleston, West Virginia, and we were warned at the box office that it was in Chinese with subtitles, therefore no refunds. Well, DUH. One of the reasons I wanted to see "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was BECAUSE it had subtitles. As a matter of principal I probably WOULDN'T see it if it was dubbed into English, and if I were Ang Lee I would NOT include a dubbed version on the DVD package. If more Americans could get over their parochial attitudes toward foreign languages, we'd probably have more exquisite films like this in theaters.
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is an absolutely exhilarating film caught somewhere between the realms of reality and mythology, kind of like Wagner, sort of like "Star Wars." It is also a much different movie than Americans are accustomed to, and so much the better. Don't be put off by having to read the subtitles at the bottom of the frame; they are very easy to follow. I'm not a fan of Kung Fu movies, but I have to admit that the fight sequences were spectacular. As for the much-discussed suspension of certain gravitational laws in the film, please remember: It's a FABLE, and as such it's no worse than films about talking pigs. And the very ending of the film was truly sublime.
The ONLY thing that Greg & I found utterly laughable was the song "A Love Before Time," sung during the closing credits by Asian pop star CoCo Lee. It's almost as though the producers felt they HAD to come up with some kind of CD single that they could mail out to top-40 radio stations to generate interest. It was completely unnecessary and utterly incongruous to the rest of the movie. For its part the score of this movie was wonderful, with pulse-quickening percussion work during the fight sequences and Yo-Yo Ma's sensitive cello solos during some of the more dramatic moments.
See "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in the theater if at all possible. This is one of those films that TV screens simply do not do justice to.