With HERO scoring at the Box Office, I was fortunate enough, thanks to The Publicist Herself, to find myself in the Sony screening room this evening watching Director Zang Yimou's NEXT film: HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS. I was nothing short of blown away by what I saw.
This is a more conventional and less stylized film than HERO, and while it's not a very original story it is nontheless intense as hell and has enough swerves in the third act to keep you on your toes. The beautiful Zang Ziyi is scary good at conveying a varying range emotions. She does this effortlessly and is well on her way to becoming one of the best international actresses we have. Takeshi Kaneshiro, one of my personal favourites since I saw him in THE RETURNER, finally gets to do something worthy of his acting talent is able to shed his pretty boy image. Finally, what more can I say about Andy Lau? Never my favourite till recent years (see FULLTIME KILLER, the INFERNAL AFFAIRS SERIES and RUNNING ON KARMA), he has now become THE HK actor to watch. Like the best bottle of wine, he gets so much better with age (yet never visually seems to age) and really takes this movie into the stratosphere in the third act.
This movie isn't the masterpiece HERO is, but it's very close and it shouldn't be compared because its a very different movie. The climactic fight, in which the love triangle comes to a head, is brutal and charged with great emotion. It is choreographed and filmed for maximum effect and you feel every punch, kick and slice. Yimou has a cool way of balancing fantasy kung fu stuff with realistic throw downs that leave you gasping without ever taking you out of the drama. He once again creates a great love story with Martial Arts trappings and again takes the action to a new level. Simply excellent filmmaking. Check it out when it opens here in December (or so I'm told)
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