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Review : The House of Flying Daggers
Yesterday BBQ and I headed over to the University district of Seattle to see the latest Spike & Mike's Sick and twisted animation festival. However BBQ read the flier wrong and it was not showing that afternoon. So we took in The House of Flying Daggers since we were already there.
This is a Chinese flying swordsman romantic action movie by the same director as Hero. It was a good movie but I liked Hero better. The movie was in Mandarin with subtitles and the only people in the theater were either nerds or native Chinese speakers.
The movie stars Ziyi Zhang the girl from Crouching Tiger and Hero as a blind martial arts master who is suspected of being a member of an assassin guild called the House of Flying Daggers. She is totally deadly with her set of throwing knifes. One of the government agents is posing as a traveler who rescued her from captivity and they are escaping north through the forests while being perused by army troops. Along the way they might fall in love and romance and martial arts ass kicking ensues. It was cool to see Andy Lau from Full Time Killers in this movie. The characters are either falling in love, confronting their feelings, betraying one another or killing in slow motion with computer generated projectiles and wire stunts.
Some of the artistic stylish cinematography got in the way of telling a good story. Almost all of the shots are out in the forest and there is less than ten minutes of sets in the entire flick. I guess they spent all the budget on effects and costumes but it reminded me of Verses in that 95% of the flick is shot out in the woods somewhere. It came across as a tourism video promoting the forests of northern China. You know that fight in the leaves in Hero? The entire movie looks like that. No one ever missed a throwing knife and the army troops can throw bamboo spears faster than a machine gun while leaping from tree to tree after our heroes. It just goes to show that time was slower and gravity was weaker in ancient China. I was disappointed when the climatic battle between the government troops and the assassin guild took place of camera. The costumes looked like an opera and when it snows in ancient China is snows freaking fast.
I liked it and I would recommend it to people who already like that genera of movies but I did not think it was the best flying swordsman movie out there. This was more like a slow-motion bad-ass swordsman movie and it was mostly fun.
Jake at February 6, 2005 
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Comments
God I'm so STUPID!! That Varsity theater is a flip-flopper! First they said Saturday at 2:00, then they said Saturday not at 2:00! A Saturday is a Saturday, it's that simple!! That theater is always trying to straddle both sides of the issue! Oh well, House of Flying Daggers was almost as cool.
Posted by: BBQ at February 7, 2005 1:52 AM
Just saw this saturday night at the Admiral Theater. Jeeze, it blew. I've been watching kung-fu movies since the 70's and a huge fan of the modern versions. Daggers was so "stylish" it was annoying. The spinning daggers reminded me of batarangs. And at several important plot points in the movie (like when a certain character stands up in a blizzard), the audience just broke out laughing. What a stinker.
Posted by: dunsany at March 29, 2005 8:54 AM
it a good
Posted by: mr chenguin at January 11, 2007 1:13 AM
