WO HU CANG LONG (DIDIER BECU)

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2004)

Martial arts for intelligent people, that's perhaps the movie in a nutshell. Knowing the hype (and seeing it has been ranked high) I absolutely have to see this Chinese masterpiece but there are some points though that need to be said. Of course this movie is a superb masterpiece of both costumes, landscapes, visual arts and martial arts but it has been done before, just think of Bertolucci's "The last emperor" but people need their hypes now and then so saying this is a masterpiece is both true and false. The story itself can be reduced to a simple fairy tale but that's the attraction behind it as well as Ang Lee tried to give a sort of social view of the ancient China. A very wonderful movie but it'd be wrong to say this is the only martial arts-movie that is worth seeing as that's what critics want us to believe.