House of Flying Daggers

House of Flying Daggers (Director: Zhang Yimou)

Or: Shi mian mai fu (Ambush From Ten Sides). Yimou's big films are Shanghai Triad and Raise the Red Lantern. Then he made Hero (read my review here), which came out in China in 2002 but got a successful American release in August of 2004. This is also a 2004 release. Nashville got it last week. As another sidenote, I'm not sure how to name these people, since the IMDB seems to list all Asians by a "backwards" listing. Although Zhang Ziyi officially changed her name to Ziyi Zhang for Western audiences, director Zhang Yimou is listed as Yimou Zhang. I think they've "Westernized" all those names.

More balletic bloodshed from the Crouching Tiger and Hero mold, House of Flying Daggers has the same themes as well: corrupt governments, forbidden love, and people are never what they seem. The film opens in a brothel, where we are introduced to the blind Mei (Ziyi Zhang). As we find out, she's a part of the revolutionary House of Flying Daggers, hoping to cause the fall of the Tang dynasty. After a little dance sequence, she is nearly raped by a soldier named Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), and after his arrest is then made to play an "echo game" for a captain Leo (Andy Lau), a beautifully choreographed scene where Leo throws a rock that ricochets off several drums, which make certain tones, and an appropriate dance from Mei must follow.

After Mei uses part of her wardrobe to pick up a sword and start stabbing at Leo, there's a fight. It is assumed she is in league with the HOFD and she's jailed. Jin (yes, the almost rapist), under the ruse that he is now a freedom fighter after breaking her out of jail, is given the job of escorting her back, so as the government can follow and possibly find the source of their attackers.

There are, of course, obstacles during this. Jin must fight off attackers, to make the ruse more successful, but some of the fighters do not know him and are under orders to kill. The fight scenes are quite astonishingly directed, with the usual gravity-defying and general physics-defying style we've grown accustomed to from martial arts movies, and of course there's a fight in a bamboo forest (which apparently was done only for tradition). There are a ton of more secrets to be revealed once the House of Flying Daggers is reached, but importantly, a love triangle is exposed which leads to the climactic final fight, beginning with Autumn leaves and finishing in a wintry snow.

I must say the ruse is on us, because basically this is a love story from beginning to end, with the ruse being that this movie is about so much more, when it's actually just the background. I must say, that the fight scenes (choreographed by long-time fight man Siu-Tung Ching, who also worked on Hero) are great, the cinematography (Xiaoding Zhao), the production design (Tingxiao Huo), art direction (Zhong Han), costumes (Emi Wada), sound (countless are responsible), and original music by Shigeru Umebayashi are all top-notch. The only thing from keeping the movie from being great is the weight of the film. It almost seems, even though the movie clocks in at almost two hours, that it's not long enough. I thought the love triangle could have brought in some interesting dilemmas with the two sides who are fighting each other here, but that's not the direction of this film.

Anyway, it's an astonishing film to look at, and it's worth watching.