[REVIEW] House of Flying Daggers

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How do you review movies like this? With plot and character development that make See Spot Run read like a Shakespearian tragedy, these wire-fu movies seem to be a close cousin to a porno flick, except instead of naked herpes carriers cavorting on a pool table, you have people getting knives to the face. It's all about "waiting for the good part".

House of Flying Daggers embodies the best and worst of this. The story is flimsier than used toilet paper, the dialogue almost wincingly simplistic and trite. And yet, once you get to the "good parts", all is forgiven.

Well, most is forgiven. Of the six "good parts" on display here, I could probably do without two of 'em. That leaves four. Two of these four are fairly solid entries into the genre.

That leaves the other two, which are reason enough to watch this movie, and are worth at least an extra star and a half on their own. I've seen Crouching Tiger, I've seen Hero, and now I've seen this, and while I think I like the other two movies more as a whole, the "Echo Game" scene and the "Bamboo Fight" scene in this movie are by far the two most astonishing, unforgettable sequences in any of 'em. Going back to the porn analogy, these are worth fast-forwarding to, freeze-framing on, putting on endless loop, and doing whatever the cinematic version of wailing away with your pants around your ankles is.

The rest of it, the interludes, the "dramatic exposition", well, it's up to you to decide whether you can tolerate it enough to enjoy the "good parts". This task is made much easier by the fact that, Zhang Ziyi? Damn. DAMN, man. You could just stare at that puss all day long.

***1/2

[bruce]

doing whatever the cinematic version of wailing away with your pants around your ankles is.

I believe that's "wailing[*] away with your pants around your ankles." Except that, in <i>2005</i> it's probably "HD wailing away with your pants around your ankles."

Bruce

[*] In my case, "whaling" but I don't like to brag.

[Vitriola]

Iron Monkey, also good (tho not wire-fu).