Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
This is the seventh in a series of twelve movies suggested by Chip Lary.
There was a time around the turn of the last century when wire fu and wuxia films were a thing. The Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon probably started the trend, which seems to have ended with House of Flying Daggers (or Shi Mian Mai Fu). There’s something dreamy about wire fu films and the way the characters move. I like everything about the style—I like the action, I like the way they are filmed, and I particularly like the kick-ass fight scenes that are filmed in a way that the audience can actually follow the action.
What I was expecting was something that looked a great deal like Crouching Tiger both in terms of visual style and plot. I kind of got that, but kind of didn’t. House of Flying Daggers posits a world closer to Hero in terms of the plot, but gives us a love story closer to Crouching Tiger. There’s a veneer of political intrigue here, a sort of social McGuffin that causes the rest of the plot to happen without really being that critical to the plot that we care about.
