Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Ka M — 30 Dec 2009

This paved the way for 4-5 more excellent movies in this genre, to enter mainstream Western cinema. Flying Daggers challenges it as the best of them, but you can never forget the first. Brilliantly paced even when it feels like it's ground to a halt.

There's something almost Shakespeare-like about the drama and narration, while the action scenes beautifully suspend belief with us eventually not noticing. You'll accept gravity defying humans as you do bullet dodging Hollywood heroes. Visually stunning, although flying Daggers does it better - this is excellent on the small screen as well.

The two leads have never made a better movie - they were perfect in their art. Yun-Fat Chow steals all of his scenes as he should, Yeoh says that she doesn't even speak the language and Zhang made me search out her other movies - she's very good.

If you don't like sub-titles watch it again in English on the DVD - that'll cure it!