A sure lock for the best picture...

Rating: 9/10 (30 December 2000)

"Crouching Tiger, Hiding Dragon" is a top rate martial arts film. Taken at just that it is sufficient, but it is also surrounded by beautiful cinematography a well developed plot, superb acting, and an intangible sense of awe and wonder.
There are many beautiful landscape shots, and they help to establish the movie as keeping with a tradition of long standing Martial Arts epics. The movie could be viewed as The Matrix meets Quentin Taratino meets Bruce Lee, but that would be limiting its scope (it is no coincidence however that the story is based on a series of popular chinese pulp fiction stories). The sense of awe is established from the opening shots to the wonderfully choreographed action sequences (my particular favorite is one of the final ones in which the to combatents fight while standing on the tree tops). In a light year for movies, this foriegn film comes flying through as one of the front runners for the best picture.