Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Maineutral R — 29 Dec 2013

The director of Hulk made this? Before Hulk? Huh. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is one of the best international films I have ever seen (along with Ong Bak), featuring a crisp story, awesome action sequences, beautiful scenery and just the enough taste of entertainment to keep you on track...except the last 15 minutes, which, I'm not gonna lie, I was bored. But the rest still makes the movie worth. Those martial arts battles here are awesome, guess we have to thank Yuen Woo Ping from The Matrix for such incredible scenes. Man, I love martial arts films.

The cast is great, featuring strong actors like Chow Yun-Fat, alongside Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chen Chang. They all have great characters to perform, and each of the performers charisma gives the movie a boost, helping the story to develop. Everything was going right, but my main problem came twice in the movie (i know what you're thinking, you pervert!), the first is the backstory of Jen. It is good to give your main character a back-story, but it doesn't have to take a lot of screen time at once. If the story would have been told more periodically, it would have been OK. The other problem were the last 15 minutes...I'm sorry, I know they're the end of the story, but man, I was bored. I guess it's because it came after an amazing martial arts fight that was fast-paced, from there going to a slower story-resolution...yep, it was boring. But still it was a correct way to end the story, just not the best moment to do so. It's merely technical, so I shouldn't complain that much.

Nevertheless, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (man, it takes a while to write that down) is one of Ang Lee's best films, if not the best (i haven't seen Life of Pi at this far) and surely I would return again and again just to enjoy it again and again. A great martial-arts film, with a taste for good drama.

It's very obvious that they're hanging on wires, come on guys...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS REVIEWS PART 08: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2001).