Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Genaro C — 19 Jul 2013

This is the film that helped me understand the grandness and majesty that can be found in superbly made martial arts films. Much like Enemy at the Gates, I saw it at a time when I was barely beginning to understand the benefit of watching more mature films, and this one definitely helped with that development.

Most entries in the martial arts genre, to my knowledge, tend to focus purely on the spectacle and forget about the more human elements of the story; Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is an exception to this and does a fine job of making the most of it.

All of the characters are fleshed out people with very personal reasons behind their actions, which make for some fascinating exchanges regarding the philosophies and discipline behind the martial arts as well as human connections.

Even the action sequences are not reduced to mere spectacle, but are presented more as a "celebration of the combatants' powers" as Roger Ebert put it, having a sense of poetry and dramatic weight to them as I have rarely seen in similar sequences.