Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Directed by Ang Lee who has shown us quite a bit of diversity in his directorial career with films such as Life of Pi, Brokeback Mountain, Hulk and Sense and Sensibility.
A famous Fighter Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) has decided to retire after failing to catch his master’s killer. He asks friend Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) to deliver his equally famous sword, the Green Destiny, to another trusted friend for safekeeping.
However, a theft of the Green Destiny at night leads Yu Shu and Li Mu pursuing the masked assailant.
I thought I knew my opinions on this film before I re-visited it, and the first 30-40 minutes were as I remembered. While the fights scenes were impressive and the wire work is like nothing that came before it, I did see flaws. Some wires were visible, the acting reminded me of the late 70’s show Monkey and the fight scenes went on too long for me, making the amazing choreography diluted somehow. But the second half was a brilliant surprise to me. The action started to fade into the background as the fight scenes got shorter and into the forefront came a beautiful character driven movie with some of the most amazing cinematography I’ve ever seen. By the end of the two hour run-time I was hooked and had to let the credits run for a few minutes before I was back in the room.
I loved the cinematography, Peter Pau was in charge and he fully deserved his Oscar win, also the location choices were stunning. From the Chinese provenances to the Gobi desert (where apparently it wouldn’t stop raining) every set looked beautiful, I could have just watched the scenes without any dialogue. Also, a big shout out has to go to the main cast, as nearly all the stunt work was mostly performed by them, with the wires removed in post-production.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and it ended up winning 4, which is an impressive haul. It also had a meagre $17m budget that grossed over $210m, $128m in the U.S alone. Back in 2000 $128m was considered a great return for a theatrical release, whereas now it may just be the caterers bill for the latest superhero movie.
This was supposed to be the film I was looking forward to watching and reviewing the least, but as it turned out I had a great time and will be watching it again soon.
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