Li Mu Bai, a great warrior decides to turn in his sword, the Green Destiny to a treasured friend. When the sword is then stolen, it is up to him to retrieve it. At the same time he is trying to avenge his master's death by the evil Jade Fox. He is joined in his quest by Shu Lien, the un-conceded love of his life. During all of this, they are introduced to Jiao Long Yu (Jen), the mysterious and beautiful daughter of a well known family. She is the mysterious link to all these tales. But through all the many subplots, this is in essence, a love story.
Well, that's one way to put it.
Another way to put it is: BUY THIS DVD. NOW.
CT,HD is one of the all-time greatest romantic movies ever made - if you watch it in Mandarin with subtitles. The English audio track on the DVD is horribly done, and reduces a magnificent movie to the level of Saturday Action Cinema. However, the entire cast did a wonderful job on the Mandarin track; it's definitely the way to go.
The story revolves around a swordsman, Li Mu Bai, who wants to retire from what he sees as senseless violence. He has a special sword, called the "Green Destiny," which is nearly indestructible; rather than see it fall into the hands of someone unable to appreciate it, he wishes to give it to his patron.
The complications begin when Jen, played with skill and sensitivity by Zhang Ziyi, steals the sword from Mu Bai's patron. Mu Bai pursues her, and discovers that she has been taught the martial techniques he uses, but by someone who does not fully understand them. He determines to take Jen as his student, despite her objections, and follows her when she flees.
There are two separate, but intertwined, love stories - Li Mu Bai and his unacknowledged love, Shu Lien, and Jen and Black Cloud, a bandit chieftain. Jen is fleeing an arranged marriage to a minor noble who will certainly require her to become a traditional Qing dynasty wife, and falls in love with Black Cloud, who offers her greater freedom than she had thought possible.
Both stories are carried out around the chase for the sword, and both are played with vast sensitivity and skill by the cast; Yuen Wo Ping's fighting choreography only serves to contrast the essential serenity of Mu Bai and Shu Lien's relationship, and to highlight the essential wildness of Jen's relationship with Black Cloud.
The movie is filled with incredible visuals. Often the fight scenes defy physics and gravity, but this isn't a realistic movie anyway; it's a lyrical fairy tale in the old sense, a movie so caught up in wonder, and its own sense of magic, that it doesn't stop to ask if it can do something. It just does.
Buy this; anyone with any imagination will enjoy it immensely. This is the movie that all the other adaptations of Giang Hu novels have been shooting for, and missed. This is the bar; it challenges other filmmakers to reach its standard merely by existing.
I bow, in the most profound admiration, to Ang Lee.
