Mark’s review published on Letterboxd:
In a way, House of Flying Daggers is the last part of a trilogy that begins with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and peaks with Hero. Crouching Tiger introduced us to the idea of high-flying wire-fu; I called that movie the purest martial arts film I had ever seen because the use of wires removed the actors from reality in such a way that allowed us to appreciate the form and tenants of martial arts without regard to realism, while simultaneously reinforcing that film's theme of the epic fairy tale. Hero responded to Crouching Tiger by making a film not unlike Rashomon that dissected the idea of the legend.
House of Flying Daggers, other than having the best title of the three, adds nothing to what had become an already crowded genre. The idea of the epic fairy tale is still in place here, but this time there are no compelling reasons to fight or commentaries on story-telling. Even in terms of action, House of Flying Daggers is the most stale of the bunch: Zhang really outdid himself with an endless set of huge and colorful set pieces in Hero, and here it all feels so uninspired.
At its heart, House of Flying Daggers is a (rather embarrassing) love story, which is more problematic than anything considering that yet another star-crossed lovers story can only force the story even further into 'we've seen this a million times' territory. Considering how greatly original and surprisingly smart Flying Daggers' predecessors were, I can't help but feel like this movie is something of a cash-in on a soon to be creatively dead genre.