During the reign of the Tang dynasty in China, a secret organization called "The House of the Flying Daggers" rises and opposes the government. A police officer called Leo sends officer Jin to investigate a young dancer named Mei, claiming that she has ties to the "Flying Daggers". Leo arrests Mei, only to have Jin breaking her free in a plot to gain her trust and lead the police to the new leader of the secret organization. But things are far more complicated than they seem...
A big part of the ad copy for HoFD was the fact that it starred several of the same actors as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and was largely made by the same team.
Sadly, although he definitely has his strengths, Zhang Yimou is no Ang Lee. HoFD is not as good as CT,HD. Let's make no mistake there. Although it occasionally even surpasses CT,HD in its visuals, the story isn't as strong, and Zhang Yimou doesn't build the sympathy with his characters that Ang Lee managed so wonderfully in CT,HD. Don't get me wrong, here, this is an enjoyable movie - I bought it - but it's just not as good as CT,HD.
That said, though, it is a very impressive film. The set design and costumes are amazing, and Zhang Yimou's use of color to delineate events is a technique raised here to an art form. The cinematography is incredible, and the visual effects are so striking I found myself re-running scenes just to see how they were put together.
What weakens this film is first the story, which while certainly interesting, does not possess the depth or complexity of CT,HD; and secondly, the fights.
Yes, I said the fights weaken the film.
See, the fights are beautifully choreographed, and eye-poppingly well filmed; it's just that they're too over-the-top. So many moments occur that defy reality so extremely that your brain, watching, simply cannot dismiss is as fantasy.
When you see one thrown dagger sever 25 or so stalks of bamboo, you think, simultaneously, "Cool!" and "Bullshit!" The problem is that you're never supposed to get to the second one, and you do so several times during HoFD.
In CT,HD, Ang Lee managed to take amazing, gravity-defying fight scenes, and play them as a kind of lyrical fantasy, turning Chow Yun Fat's character into a mythic hero, rather than a stuntsman. Sadly, Zhang Yimou cannot quite make the same leap, and although his fight scenes are visually beautiful to behold, they never make the leap from "fantastic but fake" to "wow."
Zhang Ziyi, who plays the female lead in this movie and the role of Jen, the sword thief, in CT,HD, does her usual stellar job; she is not only beautiful, and stunt-capable, but she is in fact a fine actress, and deserves her rapidly growing reputation. I only wish that she could get a role in which they'd let her beauty shine; makeup artists seem determined to minimize its impact as much as possible, for what seems to me no reason whatsoever.
This is a visually amazing movie, with a good story and (astonishingly enough) a competently acted English audio track on the DVD. It's certainly worth every penny for the DVD, which is in the superior anamorphic widescreen format and comes packed with extras, including over an hour of "making-of" documentaries, audio commentaries by the director and cast, storyboards, and loads of other goodies. Just don't go into it thinking that this is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 - it's not. What it is, is a good, action-filled, visually striking film.
