Beautiful martial arts epic

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2006)

Easily one of the most beautiful slide-show of Chinese landscapes, combined with astonishing martial arts scenes, where the parties involved are defying gravity, fight-dancing thru the air, and walking on water. The movie was surely made out of love for martial arts, as it takes them to another dimension, where sword-fights are a form of poetic expression, and the fighters are in communion with the elements of nature.
Storywise it's not complex, the story revolving around the Hero and a love triangle involved in the killing of the King. Clearly Asians have developed a taste for the dramatic, as the characters seem as always a bit linear in their anger, climaxing with those typical stand-offs. Expect the typical Asian freeze-up and frowned expression when displaying dramatic undertone, also seen in Manga animation, with the impenetrable face expression, and seemingly endless staring, but leaving out the usual martial arts movie plot with adjacent characters (the usual crazy, lazy or drunken challengers) transcend the action-movie genre, and create a somewhat stretched, but nevertheless beautiful Chinese history epic.