Hanging tiger, ballet dragon

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2001)

After watching this movie I felt both puzzled and disappointed. As a matter of fact,being a couch potato I usually admire martial arts films when they are life-like and plausible (e.g. Jackie Chan films, Bruce Lee films and Jet Li). The stunts of that film were very much artificial: characters seem to be dancing, not fighting, and it's very disconcerting to see people perform tricks obviously suspended from thin lines. I believe such awkward glorification of the characters' mastership only does them wrong, as it looks funny and destroys the intended effect. If the whole story is meant to be a fairy tale, then let it have more attributes of such, then flying and water-skimming won't seem so ridiculous. The female parts were much better than that of Chow Yun Fat, at least they were capable of some emotion and he was "too far gone on the way to perfection". The only thing I liked is the jump of Jen in the last moment of the film and the legend about making wishes come true.