a few thoughts about the movie..

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2001)

There have been so many wonderful reviews about this movie. I just want to clarify a few things for some of the users.
Many people criticized the heavily *wire* works used in this movie, thought they are not the *real* martial arts like Jackie Chan's movies. But what they might not know is that there have always been two types of these kind of movies in China and Taiwan. One kind is called martial art (like Jackie Chan's movies), realistic but within human limitation. The other kind is called Wu Xia, which only exists in Chinese wildest imagination.
"Crouching Tiger..." is the later kind. It's unfair and ignorant to compare it with realistic kind of martial art movies!
Ang Lee did an extremely well job to capture and visualize that imagination for most Chinese who ever read Wu Xia novels. I feel sorry for those who can only relate this movie to the Peter Pan. Remember, it's a movie made for Chinese! Not a fortune cookie made for Western audience.

But what I found extraordinary about this movie is that Ang Lee first time directed this type of movies and attempted to create one which is very different from the thousands of its kind being done in the past, and he accomplished that!
I always thought the fun of movie watching is it transpots us to a different experience. If you were that type of people who can't leave cell phones at the door and allow to be apart from *reality* for two hours. Perhaps this is not a movie for you. I can't guarantee the rest of you that you will like this movie, but you certainly will enjoy the experience!