Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001, DVD)

I never wanted to write a review of this movie. In fact I saw it because I read so many fab reviews of this movie on epinions that I thought why not. So on a Saturday night we sat in a bunch and watched it on VCD. I had raved about it so much to my husband, my sis and the two friends watching with us that mid way through they started giving me ugly glances and I was like you better wait, so many people liked it, so it will turn into something finally. But then that was another story and I wanted it to leave it at that.

meanwhile what happens is that when I read a movie review these days I always see this CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON (CTHD) being top rated. I don t grudge it but when every time I go near the movie section and every time I see CTHD winking at me, it becomes too much. I finally decided I will rant and move on, I will not fume silently every time I see it there.

Maybe it was not a bad movie. May be I watched it after reading too many fab reviews and that raised my expectations too high. But come what may and try as I might I didn t like the movie in the end.

Now this movies plot I am sure is well known to all, but this is how I see it. There is a slightly older couple in this movie and then there is a slightly younger couple in this movie. The older guy is a man to watch out, he kicks best of them all. But the older lady too is very good at it and so is the younger one. I am not so sure about the abilities of the younger lad but that I guess doesn t matter. Then there is a sacred sword that the older guy wants to give away, as to signify his giving up of fighting. Older lady carries it to a place where it will be safe, meets younger lady there. They have a chit chat and later in that night the sword gets stolen.

Older lady chases a masked person (who picked the sword) and they fight. Here for a while you will be stunned. The fighting sequence is so well done and probably something not done before that it will captivate you. But let us move on. The sword is still missing. You too can guess who took, so could I, and no prize for guessing that it was the younger lady.

Now this younger lady has been taught kicking by a bad lady and she is older man s enemy. So the older man is after the younger lady, so as to teach her properly as she is really good and to drive her out of bad influence and get the sword back. In between the younger lad, he comes out of blue in a flash back. He took the younger girl s comb and she chases him and he chases her, they get secluded from rest of the crowd and after a lot of fighting they fall in love abruptly, only to find that the younger lady goes back and her parents arrange her marriage. In the end the things settle down but not to everyone s liking, the movie characters I mean.

Now how complicated this story seems to you? Not too much I thought? What carried the day for the movie was the richness and uniqueness of the environment (Chinese), the good opening fighting sequence (that got repetitive very soon and that bamboo sequence then made me gnash my teeth as I had seen enough flying, or such stunts, for a life time by that time in one movie). The strength of the movie became the weakness of it for me. The fighting after a while became repetitive and I started questioning its feasibility. Had they not shown so much of flying and what not, it could have just registered and added to the movie. But so many unbelievable sequences, in my opinion detracted from the movie.

The subtitles were not a problem for me, as I am better at reading English and understanding a movie than at by listening to it!

To me the movie fell short because of its weak story line. Special effects can carry the movie only so much and they did much more than expected for this movie. And really I didn t want to write this review but for this movie flashing and winking again and again and again at me whenever I got anywhere near the movie section.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Now that some time have passed while I wrote this review, I am no longer afraid of going near the movie section. When CTHD winks at me, I too give it a smile and happily linger on.