A beautiful movie bludgeoned by movie politics

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2001)

Crouching Tiger is a beautiful movie, no if's and but's about it. And yet it suffers from one disturbingly serious flaw.
The real star of the movie is Jen (Zhang Ziyi). But you won't know that from the trailers. In fact, I have the DVD here and Zhang is only fourth in its billing, which is outrageous. This is like giving Liam Neeson only fourth billing in Schindler's List.
Apparently, the movie's producers wanted to leverage the star power of Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh to the hilt. If that meant playing with the credits, then so be it. Unfortunately, they went further than that. Much further. The producers went so far as to alter the sequencing of the movie's events just to make Michelle and Chow the apparent stars.
Ideally, the movie should begin with the story of Jen's desert adventure, where we can establish her history with proper attention. Unfortunately, to do so would also establish her as the real star of the movie, which the producers felt may threaten its box office appeal. So the producers decide to open the story with Yeoh and Chow instead.
Unfortunately, the end result is rather clumsy: the only way to segue back to that important desert scene is thru a painfully long flashback, which becomes distracting and eventually damaging to the epic flow of the movie. And all because the producers refuse to admit, to this day, that Zhang is the real star of the movie.
Politics aside, however, the movie is a beautifully rich production. The cinematography is astonishing, the setpieces are lavish and, in the end, it made me wish that I too could fly.