Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Oren S — 23 Aug 2011

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's a modern classic. It was nominated for all kinds of awards and all my firends can't shut up about how awesome it is, but it may just be one of the worst movies I've ever seen, or maybe it could be the best I don't know because I was so bored I couldn't even sit through it to the end. Don't flip out on me for not finishing it, this is just a review I'm doing becuase I'm bored. Most of this films problems I think just come from the fact that a lot of its value was literally lost in translation. The movie was originally in Chinese, which I can't speak. I didn't want to sit through a movie that I heard was so actionpacked and have to read subtitles the whole time and miss it. This idea worked great for the incredible John Woo classic 'Hard Boiled' so I went for the dubbed version.

This poses a lot of problems when trying to review it. Was the acting good? I have no clue. I don't know if what the dubbed voices are saying is delivered in the say wat the actor did in the original so I don't really know how well they did.

It also brings in problems with the script. The lines are almost always laughable becuase they have to word everything so oddly to make it fit in with the dubbing, and it just doesn't work very well.

My final big problem with this movie was what everyone told me was so cool about it, the fighting. I'm not a big kung-fu fan, nor am I a huge action fan but I can honestly tell you I hated the fighting in this movie. My biggest problem with it was the way they seemed to be able to defy all laws of physics, especially the way they jumped. They all jump like they're on the moon, its practically flying. In fact there is one scene where one girl tries to jump away but the other guy grabs her sword and she literally floats in the air until he lets go, so yeah they are flying. Maybe I just like my movies to be too realistic because I just couldn't take this one seriosuly.

I guess I should end on a high note with two other things I didn't mind about it. Both the direction and camerwork were fantastic and really established the setting and tone quite well. The plot was okay I guess. A legendary sword gets stolen so they try to get it back with a few pitstops on the way. It's simple but effective I guess. The final thing I'll say is the music is pretty good. It's just your typical dramatic film score but done with Chinese instruments which works well and again establishes the setting well. For all these things I gave it a 10%, which is actually higher than some movies I've seen the whole thing of.

Maybe I'll finish this movie some day, but until then this is what I think of it, love it or hate it.