Some things you must understand before watching it!

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2000)

Some things you must understand before watching it!
WuXia stands for martial chivalry. (Wu is the Chinese character for martial, and Xia for chivalry or chivalrous fighter.) If I have a find an film analogy for Americans to fully appreciate this film , it's "X-men" I would compare to. When in chaotic times (especially when at war , or when the society is extremely unfair,) authors (common in every culture) write story like this to express their anger toward injustice. I don't use "Batman" as an analogy, because in "X-men", more political and emotional sides of human nature are discussed. And that's why "X-men, the movie" got much higher rating on IMDB than that of "Batman 3" or "Batman 4."
If you can accept the ideology of this fantasy, you'll find a lot of implicit story lines that you can come home with and mull for a long time.
For those who don't fully comprehend the story because of the fast pace and huge amount of interconnected dialogue, Jen dies. Ang Lee didn't make such a big mistake to make this a ghost story.
Another idea that is to be clarified is, for WuXia novel readers, those fighters don't fly. (WHAT A HUGE MISUNDERSTANDING!) Those trained fighter must bounce against something to make a high jump, just like Wolverine, not Storm nor Rogue. It's called the light-body KungFu. Modern athletes tie lead straps around the ankles , and when without straps, they jump higher. That is the basic idea of this kind of training. It's just WuXia fighter boosts this jumping power by inner power (like the Force in Star Wars, this idea is better known to yoga learner. And Chinese KungFu has its roots from India with Buddhism coming to China)
I do think the bamboo scene is overdone, a lot of WuXia novel readers think so, too. But the 1st fight scene is much more real. The close-body fight between Jen and ShuLien, I think that is something those of you have learned Tai-chi boxing understand. I suggest you guys rent Ang Lee's first famous debut "Pushing hands", this is about the relation of an immigrant Tai-chi master and his son and American daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law is a perfect example of one who fears what she doesn't understand. And Tai-chi boxing are strongly founded on physics.
The director's intention is to elevate action-packed traditional WuXia movies to the next level. And he did it. As for those of you who think the film doesn't live up to your expectations , maybe you should blame the Sony Classics' overdone promotional ads and campaigns. And which film promo doesn't overdo itself these days?
I don't know why this "choreography" term has been overly inflicted on this film. Martial art is martial art. This term connotes "dance," but has nothing to do with martial art.
For those of you who think CTHD is not as good as "The Matrix," CTHD is a rommance with action. Matrix is a sci-fi with action. They're not supposed to be the same. What they have in common are that they both hired YUEN HO-PING as martial art director to present the fight scenes. And They both deal with "spiritual and skill elevation" topic.
For those of you who think CTHD's story lines are too vague, some friends of mine don't get what Matrix is about after watching. (Maybe their faults!) And CTHD requires more brainstorming to fully appreciate its petite treasures scattered everywhere throughout the movie.
As a Taiwan viewer, I personally don't deem CTHD is my all-time favorite (which is actually Forest Gump.) But it's worth the admission. Maybe you should watch it again on DVD 6 months from now, but the unprecedented action scenes are something you can't fully enjoy at home -- unless you're rich enough to have a home theater.
And someone compares the "I must avenge my master's death" part to "Star Wars' dark side of the force" issue, cum' on, this is a sub-sub-sub plot of CTHD. Star War is more adventure-oriented , and CTHD deals with subtle issues. The emotional parts are for the heart, and the action scenes are for the eyes.