Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - The essential Chinese martial arts film

Review No. : 0005
Title : Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Year : 2000

Director : Ang Lee

Country : Taiwan, Hong Kong, United States, China

World’s Verdict : Rotten Tomatoes – 97%; Metacritic – 93 out of 100; IMDB – 7.9 out of 10.0; Academy Award - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography.

My Verdict : 3.8 out of 5.0.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the essential Chinese martial arts film for various reasons:  It has a nice story, good actors, incredible fight scenes, beautiful musical score and amazing cinematography.  This film introduced a sophisticated way in creating a traditional Chinese period action movie.  This is one of the films that I have watched more than three times now and I know five years from now I’m going to watch it again.  You better see it if you haven’t yet.

The story is about three people wanting closure in their lives.  One is a warrior, Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), who wants to live a normal life and prossibly marry his true love.  The other character is Mu Bai’s love, Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), who is an old maid for she chose to keep her feelings to Mu Bai all these years.  Then there’s Jen (Zhang Ziyi) a princess by day and an adventuring wannabe Wudang warrior during her free time.

The warrior, being done with martial arts, decides to give away his sword (Green Destiny it is called).  The old maid delivers the sword to Mu Bai’s friend and shows it to Jen.  Jen’s imagination triggered her kleptomaniac and adventurous spirit and stole Green Destiny one night.  That’s how the showdown of power started.

What Went Right

• The cast of characters: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi were made for this movie.  Good-looking Asians, good acting, good action skills.  They are just pretty to watch.

• Cinematography – for a martial arts movie, this one has good taste.  The scene wherein Yun-Fat and Ziyi are fighting on the bamboo grasses are beautiful scenes that are hard to forget.

• Fight scenes – they spun, they flew, they defied gravity.  Amazing fight scenes.  One of the best choreographed  martial arts fights is Ziyi and Yeoh's sword fight turned into whatever-you-grab fight.

• Score – the music was just brilliant and very in synch with the action scenes.

  

What Went Wrong

• Chang Chen – He portrayed a bandit and became Jen’s lover.  Compared to Yun-Fat, Yeoh and Ziyi's performances he just wasn’t at par.

I highly recommend this film, try to watch it in Chinese language and with no subtitles and I bet you would still love it.