Movie Review - House of Flying Daggers
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2004 / 119 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
Have you ever noticed that, just because a movie is from another country, critics have a tendency to cut it far more slack than they would cut a domestic film? Had this movie been made in Hollywood, I’m sure that critics would have fawned over its production values and marveled at its visual splendor, and then pointed out its complete and utter disregard for the laws of physics and weather. Since it originated in China, however, Yimou Zhang’s “House of Flying Daggers” is hailed as a brilliant masterpiece with amazing action sequences.
“The House of Flying Daggers” has a thimble full of plot, and the plot is this: during a time in China’s past, the dynasty that rules the country is being threatened by a group of revolutionaries known as The House of Flying Daggers. In order to stop this group of revolutionaries, two police officers (Leo and Jin) decide that one of them must go undercover, infiltrate the group and discover the identity of its leader. All the information they have to go on is that the newest addition to a local brothel (a blind girl named Mei) is actually a member of the House of Flying Daggers. By arresting this girl and then having one of the officers pretend to rescue her, they are hoping that she will lead them to the nest of the revolutionaries. Once there, they will learn the identity of the group’s leader, kill them, and then everything will be fine. This all works nicely until the man posing as the rescuer (Jin, well played by Takeshi Kaneshiro) begins to fall in love with the blind girl from the brothel (played by Zhang Ziyi, who was great in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and is just as good here) who is also a master martial artist and a member of the House of Flying Daggers (or, as it will be known for the remainder of the review, the HOFD). There are also complications involving the other officer, Leo (played by Andy Lau), who may also be in love with the girl.
At its heart, the film is really a doomed love triangle involving these three participants, and the love story works surprisingly well. This is a neat little story that wears its passions and affections on its sleeve, and that’s the way you should film a love story. Just say to hell with it and let it all hang out, fill the tale with passion, and get a couple of actors that are believable as they fall in love. Kaneshiro and Ziyi are definitely believable, and Lau has a gift for essaying jealousy that threatens to spill over into madness. I liked the way the love story developed and it did affect me. I cared about Mei and Jin and I was interested in the story of Leo. Therefore, on the acting and screenwriting front, I had no problems. I also liked the twists that are thrown fast and furiously at us toward the end of the film. I truly did not see them coming and, at a certain point, I was completely uncertain of what might happen next. Again, I like movies that do this to me.
What I had a problem with; however, were the action sequences. They are silly, for lack of a better word, and that really undermines the intensity of them. They are filmed well, and they are nicely paced, but they completely disregard the rules of the physical world one time too many. During one sequence, an army seems to descend inexplicably from the trees in a bamboo forest. In another (the most impossible to believe) the weather suddenly changes from fall to full-blown, blizzard-power winter during the course of a swordfight. This would be fine if the fight in question was supposed to last for a month or two, but I do not believe that it does. I appreciate the audacity of wanting to make a movie that just thumbs its nose at such rules, I really do. But the film should make me a believer. The movie should have me on its side, somehow, before it starts doing such grand things. The film is all about passion and revolution and those are grand, operatic notions, to be sure. But the film needed to convince me of the fact that it was going to throw logic out the window. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” had people flying through the air, but somehow it set up a world where things like that are possible. It created an atmosphere where these things could happen and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. “The House of Flying Daggers” perpetuates a mood of subtle emotion and delicate depth, and then throws in some crazy-ass fight sequences that are fun as eye candy, to be sure, but they sort of throw everything else out of whack. They’re just a bit too over the top, a little too cartoonish, to mesh with the rest of the narrative. Also, it would have been nice for the pacing of the film if they had parceled out the twists a little more evenly throughout the film, rather than loading most of them into the final act. As I said before, there is only a thimble full of plot in the rest of the movie, then suddenly the movie blindsides us at the beginning of the final act. That’s fine and dandy, but I was nearly growing restless before these twists began.
Am I nitpicking? Yeah, probably. But the fact remains that if they would have made the action sequences a little more subtle, they would have fit a little more smoothly into the story that the rest of the movie tells, rather than slamming into us out of left field as they do now. I did like that people actually died in these sequences. (Well, not in reality, but in the course of the story. Don’t worry, these people didn’t really die.) It gives the story a feeling that something is actually at stake, rather than in a lot of films of this nature where the participants seem to be fighting just for the sake of fighting and have no intention of killing each other. That sort of bloodless, honorable combat is quaint, but it’s not very suspenseful (and that was my main problem with Yimou’s earlier film: “Hero”). People drop like flies at certain points in this movie, and that did put me on the edge of my seat. But then people would emerge from the treetops or fight during an entire season and I’d be taken out of the moment again.
I liked this movie. The performances are quite good, the cinematography is beautiful, and the story is interesting. But the action sequences were just a tad much for my taste.
