After breaking with his usual type of film and meeting with great international success with Hero, many people were excited for Zhang Zimou's followup House of Flying Daggers. Unfortunately, even though the movie starts well and has some brilliant action sequences helmed by the venerable Ching Siu-Tung, the conculsion is so un-satisfying that it leaves a bad taste in the viewer's mouth. By no means is this a horrible movie as some other reviewers have made it out to be, but frankly, it's nowhere near the level of Hero or other wuxia classics like Swordsman II.

House of Flying Daggers takes places during the tumultious Tang dynasty, when various rebel factions are vying for the control of China. The strongest of these is called Flying Daggers, and two captains (Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) are sent by their commander to capture the Dagger's leader. The duo hatches a plot to capture a beautiful singer named Mei (Zhang Ziyi), who is the daughter of the rebel leader. All seems to be going well with the plan until a series of events happens which test the officers' loyalities to the state and to each other.

The plot won't win any awards for originality, but frankly, most wuxia films use some form of the "rebels verus evil overlords" story. Acting-wise, everyone here does a good job, even if Takeshi Kaneshiro seems to be channeling Ekin Cheng a bit and letting his hair do most of the work for him. Visually and sonically, this is an outstanding piece of work -- Zhang Zimou's movies always look great, and this is no exception. As I noted before, the action is top-notch; Ching Siu-Tung, in my opinion, is criminally under-rated as an action director and his work here (as always) shows how wire-fu should be done.

So why doesn't House of Flying Daggers warrant a higher score? Mostly, it's due to the feeling that there is no real sense of coherency in the film. There are a few too many plot twists that come up simply to move the story along in yet another direction. Specifically, there's a fairly major one near the end that really makes no sense and negates a lot of the character development that proceeded it. Even though the American and Chinese film industries have their share of differences, one thing they have in common is a lack of quality screenwriters, and House of Flying Daggers is yet another movie that shows that. With a bit of tightening, a more streamlined plot, and a smigen less melodrama, this could have been a classic. As it is, House of Flying Daggers is a good film, but don't expect it to be the next Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]