Beautiful cinematography can't (or shouldn't) help this poorly done film

Rating: 4/10 (1 May 2005)

This may be a beautifully shot film,it may also be the most beautifully shot film in motion picture history, but i'd like to think that the minds of cinema goers are a bit more open than to have a few nice shots win them over. My major problem with this film is the fact that due to the storyline, all the fights seem to involve someone letting someone else win for one reason or another, so those people wanting to go and see two guys with swords trying to kill each other will feel a little cheated here.
Another problem i had was that the director/writer seemed to be trying to throw to many ideas at the screen at once, and although this did result in some good scenes (fight in desert), it did throw up some stupid CGI filled scenes (fight in forest). Which leads me to another point, it could be imagined that the country that seems to be the inventor of martial arts would like to create films that makes martial arts look real and impressive and human. But this film insists on using special effects to show a raindrop bouncing of a sword or to show a whirlwind of leaves which didn't tickle my fancy.
Finally, because the script is done badly, it creates characters that are hard to relate to or understand, so when one off them gets killed off, its hard to care. TO sum up: Good idea for a film toped up by having every scene look relatively classy, thats about all.