MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Matt Greene All I knew about this movie was that the action is supposed to be meticulous and beautiful. What I didn't know is so is the story. A twisting, hidden-identities, romantic intrigue twist on the Robin Hood drama, it's a vibrant and beautiful marriage of wonderfully written melodrama and breathtakingly cool excitement...with some truly terrible CGI.

ioanaunteanu Things I've learned from the movie: A law enforcement officer can arrest a girl for wearing indecent clothes INSIDE a whorehouse; The same arrest can be dropped if the said girl performs an impressive dance for the officer; I'm serious, nobody thinks it's wrong; A blind girl can run through a forest (so a place with TREES) faster than two galloping horses; An enemy soldier will fall if hit with a stick no thicker than my finger; Enemy soldiers jumping from one bamboo tree to another will each throw at least 10 bamboo spears which are not visible during any of the tree jumping scenes; None of the above spears will hit the two main characters, even if they are a few meters away; A guy with a knife in his back will fight judo-style, land on his back at least three times, and the knife will remain there until it's time to be used in the dramatic final scene; The weather can change from sunny autumn to snowy mid winter in a few minutes because it's the dramatic final scene; The plot is masterful: A club of fighters/assassins/cool people with knives want the government to find their secret hideout. Their plan is to send an undercover agent for three years and the gorgeous girl for three days to convince the that they are, in fact, in that location. The gov becomes convinced only after some of its men were killed by another of its men; - The gov finally sends their best men to the hideout; The movie, however, ends before that final confrontation as deemed irrelevant?On the bright side, the costumes are gorgeous, and so is Ziyi Zhang (Sayuri from 'Memoirs of a Geisha').

Shopaholic35 This movie was by no means bad. It was beautifully executed, visually enticing and well acted. The one thing that ruined the entire thing for me though were those ridiculous English dubbed voice overs. It was so distracting that I found it extremely hard to focus on the movie. I don't have a problem with subtitles, a little reading never hurt anybody. Why they felt the need to westernise this movie is beyond me. If I wanted to watch an English movie I would have watched one.The soundtrack for the film complemented the storyline and locations beautifully. In fact, the music was more powerful and descriptive then the spoken words. Everything was extreme and unbelievable but it was hard not to enjoy it. The martial arts were incredible and I didn't even mind that they were over the top.It really is a beautiful movie but if you are going to watch it don't watch the English version.

Anssi Vartiainen A Chinese wuxia film riding on the coattails of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers deviates from the typical wuxia formula by being more of a love story rather than action-packed adventure. This ends up being both the strength and the weakness of the film.So what's the story. The 9th century China is in turmoil. Tang Dynasty is weakening and rebellious civil movements have begun to crop up all over the land. One of these is the eponymous House of Flying Daggers, and now the local police department believes that they have managed to locate one of the girls belonging to this organization. A plan is hatched to covertly release the girl and have her lead them to her leader. Yet problems arise as the amorous young police officer starts to fall for the fierce warrior woman.From that you can speculate much of the plot, and not in a bad way either. Sure, it's a bit predictable, but I'd rather see it as sticking to tried and true methods. Zhang Ziyi is an extremely fetching main female lead, and Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau are rather good as well as Jin and Liu, the two main police officers.Furthermore, it's an utterly gorgeous film. The settings are rich and detailed, the use of colour is phenomenal, the fight sequences are imaginative and enjoyable to look at and the music brings all together. One of the best looking films I've seen in a long time. The scenes in the bamboo forest with their thousands of shades of green are just... wow, I have no words.Yet I think that this film could have been much better with a change of focus. The setting about rebellious groups fighting against a dying dynasty is an interesting one and could have made for a really interesting adventure. Yet the main focus of the film is whether or not they really love each other? There's a missed opportunity here. Not that the love story isn't nice and heart-breaking and all that, but I was constantly questioning in my head, "Yeah, that's nice, but what about the rebellion? What about the House and its goals?" I can't exactly blame the director Yimou Zhang for trying to do something new with the genre, but perhaps a bit less adventure-oriented premise would have managed to keep my attention where it should have been.Still, it's a good film if you're looking for gorgeous visual, great action scenes and good acting performances. Recommended.