Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) by Meritcoba — 04 Mar 2016

Before Mad Max: Fury Road was released there was a certain apprehension that it would just be a rip off from an earlier Mad Max movie and funny enough it was. But Fury Road not only redid The Road Warrior but did this on high octane. Its mayor asset is that it never gives you pause to catch you breath and come to your senses. Whack them with another sequence of over-the-top actions before they start to focus on the weakness of the plot, characters and dialog! And it works. It is an awesome example of story telling that can only be done in a movie: using mostly visuals, sound and action-sequences and thus the movie comes into its own. Fury Road would be hard to write down: it would bore you to death if it did.

In comparison Sword of Destiny's fault is that it resembles earlier movies but doesn't add anything to it. Everyone wants to get that sword, the good guys gather a band of heroes to protect it, the bad guy send a lone anti hero to steal it, a girl tries to do the same at the same time: they get caught by the good side. Eventually they are forced to make an alliance when the bad guy sends an army to get by force what he couldn't get by thievery.

The acting is good, the quibbling between Natasha Liu and Harry Shum is amusing, the characters are the usual suspects, the story is mwah, the dialog trite, the fights all too familiar and because there are so many of them and done on a large scale they dominate the story line.

Sword of destiny fails where Fury Road didn't. It takes the same things we have seen over and over again, the flying fights, the few versus many fights, the running over walls, rooftops and such. It awed back in the day, but it doesn't now as Sword of Destiny doesn't energize it or give it a new twist.

And while making the same kind of movie without changing a thing must have felt like a safe option, in the end, and certainly in comparison to its predecessor, it becomes a let down. Sword of Destiny should have been to the first movie what Fury Road is to Road Warrior. Not just over the top mind you, just energize and alter it. They could have added more into this movie: more depth, more poetry, different fights, more personal ones, new kind of characters, new kind of allies, new kind of fighting methods, new weapons, new ways of filming, new sets, new scenery, new landscapes, new lighting methods, new kind of anything..but instead they walked the safe road. And in a world where the new gets old fast this is a sin and thus it gets punished.

Sword of Destiny is, by all means, not a bad movie, but nothing makes it stand out and at the end you are glad it is over and done with and that not yet another bland sword fight will erupt. Ultimately it is forgettable.

Two final observations:

-Thinking of it, there is also something very sad about the movie..The only thing that seems to matter and is talked about ad nausea is fighting. It is all they do and want to learn to do better. It gets noted that the fame of a hero last 20 years after his death/disappearance. The ultimately sadness that if you are not one, you probably won't get remembered at all. And what a sad world it is where nothing but fighting seems to get appreciated. Not writing, not poetry, not farming, not creating anything. Just killing is what matters, for that is what fighting is.

-I applaud having and older woman play an important part in this movie, especially as woman actors are usually relegated to supporting roles or a television drama leads once they hit fifty. Still doesn't make it an eight I am afraid.