how could you enjoy it? and i thought i was open to oriental culture...

Rating: 4/10 (28 January 2005)

Take Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (CTHD), remove most of the delicate love story, get rid of any character deepness, leave only:

oriental-way choreographic combats, including the usual flying people (but here totally unnatural and not always beautiful)

self-pleased examples of oriental wisdom, logic, and ideals including honor: hardly understandable to an occidental person - self-pleased plot which is not really as such

aspects of oriental culture which i had found more deeply analyzed in other Asian movies

dialogs which, at least in their English translation were not very exciting

acting pushed to the extremes of inexpressiveness (can't blame the actors)

BTW. Why the "moral" is from Machiavelli's Principe???? Is it supposed to be the oriental interpretation of European medieval age thoughts? The inner soul of the movie is that violence can be the best solution for peace? Did USA sponsor it??
I used to think i was very open-minded, i loved CTHD, I adore Kar Wai Wong, I enjoyed Dolls and like most work of Takeshi Kitano; got in love with Drunk on Women and Poetry, without forgetting Kurosawa, etc.etc.
But probably I was wrong, and apparently I just can't get into the deepness of the hong-kong/Chinese way of thinking: this must be why i am one of the very few ones who did not like this movie. I am just left with the question: WHAT FOR? I did not get any compelling photography, no extraordinary special effects, no interesting analysis of oriental culture. I yet have to see the house of flying daggers, maybe Zhang will conquer me when he gets lower IMDb ratings?