I tried to like it.

Rating: 2/10 (13 December 2004)

But failed. Obviously someone reasoned that if 'Crouching Tiger...' made money, that they could do it again and cash in a second time. Still to this day the Chinese film industry seems incapable of creating a production with a plot more sophisticated than that found in any of the Bruce Lee productions. This one, in character with the ilk, is about as deep as a kittens saucer of milk.
I honestly tried to be forgiving, to 'get into it' and to accept the cultural differences that may make it difficult for me to adopt the mindset needed for this to entertain me, and I succeeded for a while until the cumulative banality got the better of my efforts.
Can someone please tell these people that watching two opponents whirl swords around and clang them off each other is only entertaining for a very short time, and that after ten minutes of clangity clang clang clangity clang spin clang clang spin clang spin clang, we have had about nine minutes too much? It isn't suspenseful or entertaining, it's boring. BORING! Then, I suppose to spice things up, the directors have the fighters able to flit around in the air at will like chickadees or strike a pose and shoot straight through the air in one firmly held posture, with sword held out front like the cowcatcher on a locomotive. I suppose that displaying these physically impossible antics is meant to make up for the lack of a story.
(I just wonder why it is that Western audiences are so forgiving of Asian movies that are so insulting to the intelligence? Can you imagine an audiences' reaction if John Wayne or Clint Eastwood as 'Dirty Harry' were to strike a pose with his gun extended in front of him and fly screaming through the air on wires, parallel to the ground for 50 feet or more? The exits would be jammed faster than if someone yelled 'fire!'! Yet people call this 'beautiful' in an Asian film. Go figure.)
I look at the ratings this movie has garnered, and wonder if there is some deep meaning and value here that I am just too rough hewn to appreciate, for so many to praise it and I to scorn? But alas, I am left to conclude that no, there appear to be great many people who praise this genre of tripe as great stuff, in order to appear themselves as artsy and cultured. The same kind of people who don't understand Italian, but go to an opera and listen to people howling an aria in Italian, and come out saying it was a wonderful and moving story! Knock yourselves out, poseurs. This movie was pretentious garbage.