House of Flying Daggers
2004 Directed by Yimou Zhang
Synopsis
In 9th century China, a corrupt government wages war against a rebel army called the Flying Daggers. A romantic warrior breaks a beautiful rebel out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem.
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A blind showgirl and the undercover agent sent to catch her run away together, pursued by scores of soldiers AND OH MY WORD, WILL YOU LOOK AT THOSE COLOURS, I THINK MY EYES HAVE AN ERECTION. Zhang Yimou's stunning, vivid, extremely green contribution to the wuxia genre is like opium for your optics: beautifully designed and filmed in colours both bold and gentle, vibrant but never garish, its vast widescreen frame filled with an abundance of detail: drums, trees and ribbons all seen as if seen for the first time.
There's also like a story. Zhang Ziyi stars as a blind, dancing prostitute and enthusiastic insurgent - allied to a revolutionary movement called the House of Flying Daggers - who's…
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Crouching Tiger has better fights, Hero is beautifully colourful but neither have the emotional impact of Flying Daggers which also is as visually stunning as Hero. Ziyi Zhang is exceptional.
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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Not as emotionally involving as Ang Lee's magnificent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or as epic as Yimou Xiong's Hero, House of Flying Daggers is still a slice of beautifully shot escapism.
The film boasts some spectacularly choreographed fight sequences, the highlight for me being the prolonged treetop attack where soldiers slide up and down bamboo shoots swooping at their targets like birds of prey.
Unfortunately House suffers from being overly sentimental and there is a slight overuse of slow motion that tends to jar the films flow somewhat, but compared to most modern Hollywood action fare, I can quite easily let it's imperfections slide and enjoy the rich tapestry of Eastern aesthetics on show here.
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drama bomb.
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Pretty cool.
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House of Flying Daggers is Zhang Yimou's wuxia masterpiece. It stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as Jin (Or Wind as some will know him as) Andy Lau as Leo and Ziyi Zhang as Xiao Mei. Set during the Tang Dynasty, the declining dynasty are troubled by a rebel group, The House of Flying Daggers.
Two police captains suspect a blind dancer (Mei) to be the daughter of the recently killed Flying Daggers leader and plan to use her to lead them to the House of Flying Daggers and their new leader, whom the two captains have been instructed to find and kill within 10 days. Leo instructs Jin to accompany Mei and to gain her trust for this plan. Much of the…
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A blind showgirl and the undercover agent sent to catch her run away together, pursued by scores of soldiers AND OH MY WORD, WILL YOU LOOK AT THOSE COLOURS, I THINK MY EYES HAVE AN ERECTION. Zhang Yimou's stunning, vivid, extremely green contribution to the wuxia genre is like opium for your optics: beautifully designed and filmed in colours both bold and gentle, vibrant but never garish, its vast widescreen frame filled with an abundance of detail: drums, trees and ribbons all seen as if seen for the first time.
There's also like a story. Zhang Ziyi stars as a blind, dancing prostitute and enthusiastic insurgent - allied to a revolutionary movement called the House of Flying Daggers - who's…
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Producida durante el breve periodo de tiempo en el que Occidente se sintió atraído de manera masiva por cintas de artes marciales que, en otras circunstancias, no habrían salido de Hong-Kong, 'La casa de las dagas voladoras' quizá no sea la que tiene más combates o la que lleva más lejos la obsesión por la estética (en ambos campos 'Hero', también de Zhang Yimou, estaría por encima), pero sí es la que posee una historia de mayor calado emocional y la que seguramente aguante más revisionados debido al impecable trabajo actoral de sus tres protagonistas y al complejo, trágico y arrebatador triángulo amoroso en el que se ven inmersos.
Además, la coreografías de Ching Siu-Tung brillan con luz propia, lo que sumado a lo anterior convierte a la película en la opción perfecta para satisfacer tanto a los fans fatales de las hostias como a los espectadores que suspiren con las grandes historias de amor en el cine.
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This is how I imagine all Chinese films are like. Unnecessary and unrealistic but still amazing martial arts all the time. Didn't pay that much attention to the story, but the action was among the top.
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House Of Flying Daggers is really pretty silly. It's easy to see why films such as Kung Fu Hustle and Kung Pow have so much material to work from, because martial arts movies, even the best ones, are just as epic as they are ridiculous. This movie has a huge number of plot contrivances and ludicrous twists, and requires the audience to suspend an insane amount of disbelief for any of it to make any logical sense. However, House Of Flying Daggers works precisely because it's so legitimately committed to doing all that to the most extreme degree. The reality-warping fight sequences are breath-taking, the OTT settings look gorgeous, and the impossible nature of the entire movie works because it's…
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Very pretty!