Am I the only one who thought this was a terrible movie?

Rating: Null/10 (13 January 2001)

Everybody was kung-fu fighting- and I couldn't have cared less. I was sold on the idea by all the critics and their "top 10" lists that CTHD was not only a visual-kinetic experience like "The Matrix," but that it's plot and characters all connected to render the intoxicating feel of pure poetry.
Ha. I had to fight to keep myself awake through most of this sloppy, stylish mess. So what exactly is wrong with this film? First, the dialogue sounds like something out of a bad Pokemon episode (of course, is there such thing as a good Pokemon episode? Now that's zen.). Second, the film's pacing is all in the gutter. Ang Lee is a wonderfully talented director and I enjoyed "Sense and Sensibility," so it stuns me that he could leave a narrative this stilted. The film opens with the conflict over a mystical (natch) sword that is stolen by the spoiled daughter of the province governor. Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh play ex-warriors who try to get it back. That's it- that's the whole plot. Oh, there are a few other items that are dropped in here and there with a headache-inducing THUD: something about a Jade Fox warrior who seems to have killed off the relavtives of half the people in China and now everyone wants dead and Ziyi Zhang's love affair with a desert bandit- a flashback sequence that is shoehorned into the middle of the film and stops the story cold.
Yes, the stunt work is something to see, even if they don't live completely up to their hype. The first couple of sequences take place at night and are poorly edited so we are hard pressed to figure out who is beating the stuffing out of who.
Come down to it, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon only drops hints to what kind of great film it could have been. I was expecting passion. I was expecting lyrical poetry, like in John Woo's "The Killer," but all I got was pulp, instead.