Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat,Michelle Yeoh,Ziyi Zhang
Fifteen minutes into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, something
wondrous happens. Having started us off with the draggy details of a
standard-issue kung fu movie subplot, the movie springs a fight scene on us. A
woman chases after a thief, who climbs up the roof to try to get away. Then, the
amazing happens: the two start to fly, floating from one rooftop to the next,
running up walls and over alleys, defying gravity beautifully. Fifteen minutes
into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you are hooked, and will be for the
next two hours.
As far as martial arts movies go, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is
the best, simply put. Director Ang Lee has done something unique: he’s infused
an admittedly slim story with meaning and emotion, and combined it with arguably
the greatest fight scenes ever filmed. Created by the legendary Yuen Woo
Ping-whom American audiences may know, or at any rate should know, as the man
responsible for the fight scenes in The Matrix-the fight scenes, I
guarantee, will rock your world. (And if they don’t, check yourself into a
morgue.)
The plot, as I said, is fairly run-of-the-mill, as with most martial arts
films. (Lee said he wanted to do a movie from the traditional kung fu stories of
his youth. For better and worse, it’s what we get.) Things kick off when a
mysterious thief runs off with the magical jade sword of Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun
Fat), a legendary warrior. With the help of his longtime object of affection Yu
Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), Li tries to track down the thief. Thrown into the mix
is a beautiful princess who craves a life of adventure, and a reckless outlaw
from her not-so-distant past.
These characters march to the beat of the genre’s drum-there’s nothing
blazingly original about the story, except perhaps its sadness. It’s a strange
feeling to walk out of a kung fu movie feeling melancholy, but that’s what
this movie does: it’s exhilarating, yes, but it’s got heft too. A major
character dies, another one is left heartbroken, and another lives on with the
wisdom of the mistakes made. When was the last time you saw an action movie
without a climactic battle scene? Like, never. Is it a downer? Perhaps. But you’ll
get over it. For all its slenderness, the plot does have a surprising ability to
draw you in.
I saw this movie for the first time at the New York Film Festival in
the fall. As the first fight scene ended, the crowd spontaneously broke into
applause. It’s strange: with all the computer graphics technology Hollywood
has put to use in movies throughout the years, audiences still applaud the real
thing. The fight scenes in this movie, using that most advanced of technology of
hanging actors on wire to make it look like they’re flying, give this movie a
charge. You watch it and you know that’s acrobatic and actorly skill at work,
not a degree in computer science and a fortune’s worth of tech equipment.
The flick has already garnered some of the best reviews of the year. Some
have already gone on to say that it’s the best movie of the year; they may be
straining, but I see their point. Flaws and all, Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, with its deft melding of art-film solemnity, epic beauty, and
kinetic action, is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
