Crouching Tiger, Hidden Story

Rating: 5/10 (30 March 2001)

Okay, I can understand why so many people like this movie...I think. Granted, it is beautifully filmed and the action scenes are wonderfully choreographed, but does that really make a great film? Let's think about it from a different prespective for a moment...
First of all, I did not care about any of the characters. Whatever love story or feelings there were between Chow Yung Fat's character and Michelle Yeoh's were completely lost. There was absolutely no developing of that subplot. There was no tension, and when it finally came time for Fat's character to profess his love for her, it seemed forced, unnatural and straight-out stupid. Nothing they had done up until that time suggested that they felt that way about each other. It seemed like the filmmakers just wanted to throw in something for him to make a dying monologue out of.
Which is another film, I can't remember the last film that I saw that had so many people with dying monologues. It seemed that every even semi-important character had to go with a long, drawn out speech. JUST DIE, DAMNIT!!
Having said that, the dialogue was incredibly tedious to sit through, the acting/characters was about as three-dimensional as a drawing on a piece of paper. On top of all of this, the story seemed to be forced and (excuse me for saying so) not too original at all. I've seen it a thousand times before, only it was done better than this.
However, the cinematography was beautiful and lush, the action scenes marvelous, the set pieces gorgeous, the theme breathtaking. But all of that is not enough to make up for the lack of story, plot, character development and scripting.
Overall I give it a 5 out of 10. It is DEFINITELY not worthy of "Best Picture of the Year"...not even close. I wasn't expecting much from this film considering all its hype, but I wasn't expecting to be so disappointed either.