A brilliant Epic!

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2001)

Wow, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is in one word 'Amazing.' Surely due for a few nods from the Academy Awards, this film is nothing less than extraordinary.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is above all a story of love. First of two aging fighters, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), who are courageous warriors yet cannot seem to push their feelings toward each other out into the open. Next, it tells of the love between Jen Yu (Ziyi Zhang), a brilliant martial artist who happens to be the daugther of a governor, and Lo (Chen Chang) a desert bandit who is filled with ambition but who focuses his talents on robbing the wealthy. Lastly, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is about the needfullness of Jade Fox (Pei-pei Cheng) to pass her traits of brilliance in fighting for all the wrong things onto Jen Yu using stolen secrets of ancient masters.
Filled with photography to rival that of some of the finest 'big production' movies ever made and action sequences that bring the art of eastern kung-fu films to our screens in the US like no other film before it, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon doesn't seem to miss a beat throughout its entirety.
I recommend Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to pretty much anyone, whether you see it for the beauty of great film art, its story of love, or the surreal action scenes you will leave it feeling fulfilled. I only have one regret as far as this film in the fact that the same choreographer shares their name on the credits as the choreographer of The Matrix. Don't get me wrong, The Matrix was a decent movie, but if Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was released before The Matrix there may not be anything mistaken between classic kung-fu conventions and borrowed action sequences.
To sum up this film, I hope that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon can add to the bridge for us in the U.S. who are given mediocre 'blockbusters' because we haven't, as a majority, tasted real cinema except in a few rare instances, since the 70s.