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 CROUCHING
TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000)
(WO HU CANG LONG)
Director: Ang Lee
Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang
The famous film critic Roger Ebert described Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon as the most exhilarating martial arts movie he had seen.
Universally hailed and hyped and beautifully photographed in the trailers,
this is a film I had long wanted to see and I eventually caught up with
it on video. Unfortunately, I made the very big mistake of borrowing the
dubbed rather than the subtitled version, and this may have prejudiced
me to some extent.
Set in feudal China, it is essentially a sword-and-sorcery film. The
martial art sequences are choreographed in a highly stylised way but nevertheless
capture something of the techniques and characteristics that can be seen
in Kung Fu or Tai Chi ‘pushing hands’ exercises.
But the martial arts abilities of the protagonists are nothing compared
with their ability to levitate to the tops of buildings and trees with
a bounciness imitating an arcade game or a Tom and Jerry cartoon!
Now if these characters are supposed to be supernatural then so be it,
but their skimming through the air dei ex machina was in places
less convincing than in Superman!
It’s fair to say that this film does not have a very deep plot,
but neither does it have very convincing characterisation. Li Mu Bai (Yun-Fat
Chow) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) take a lot of trouble over Yu Jen
(Ziyi Zhang), but she’s nothing but a selfish spoilt brat and just
isn’t worth the effort. It’s suggested at one point that the
hero should simply have killed her earlier on: quite so!
It was good to look at and entertaining enough, but really an action-adventure
film for children. I really can’t understand how so many critics
took it so seriously.
Rik - 23 November 2001
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