Review of House of Flying Daggers (2004) by Amanda C — 07 Apr 2011
This film has absolutely stunning colour design, beginning with the beautifully bright colours of the brothel, to the desaturation of the forest, to the spectacular greens of the bamboo forest and the stark contrast against the snow in the final sequence. If only as much effort had been put into the non-visual aspects of the film. The composition is not bad, but I found the editing a tad sloppy, and the story is a bit overly melodramatic and also drags in places.
House of Flying Daggers is helped by having to extremely attractive leads who both have likeable on screen personas. Ziyi Zhang is absolutely stunning, and her stunt work is very good, doing everything with perfectly pointed toes. Takeshi Kaneshiro gives a good playful counterpoint to her more serious demeanour.
Over all this is a film that runs a tad too long and the ending is too overwrought for me. It is however, worth watching just for the look of the film, which is spectacular.
This review of House of Flying Daggers (2004) was written by Amanda C on 07 Apr 2011.
House of Flying Daggers has generally received very positive reviews.
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