House of Flying Daggers

The blind swordswoman: Suspenseful, complex House of Flying Daggers

By Mike Prevatt

There are two forces at work in Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers that all but guarantee your undivided attention for its entire two-hour duration. The first is a herky-jerky narrative firmly built on the premise of deception, so much so that you're constantly questioning the identities, loyalties and romantic aspirations of the main characters. The second is a visual and technical prowess that executes some of the most astonishing cinematic sights since, well, Yimou's last film, 2004's Hero.

Though each element threatens to overshadow the other or distract viewers from other aspects of the film, there's enough of a balance that director/co-producer/co-writer Yimou produces a film nearly as affecting as it is artistically ambitious.

Part of the flick's intrigue is that it doesn't establish any traditional heroes and villains, setting up a complex if fuzzy political subtext. It's the end of the Tang Dynasty, which boasts an untrustworthy regime riddled by corruption and greed. Reacting to that power lust here are insurgent groups such as the House of Flying Daggers, which win sympathy by appealing to the common folk. Soon after local authorities manage to kill its leader, they're after the new one, this time strategizing through the seizure of his daughter, a visually impaired brothel dancer by the name of Mei (Zhang Ziyi, from both Hero and Crouching). But when captured by two deputies, Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Leo (Andy Lau), she's anything but cooperative. So Jin decides to stage a fake rescue, disguised as a warrior named Wind, in the hopes Mei will lead them to the HFD clubhouse.

On the run, Mei and Jin encounter plenty of opposition--cue the action sequences--as well as a very jealous Leo who, as it turns out, is also hot for Mei. Suddenly, everyone's sense of purpose is changed and the film reverts to the Fight-For-the-Girl closing act.

House possesses an interesting mix of love and politics up until this point, and then Yimou goes Romeo and Juliet on us and kicks the melodrama into high gear. He milks this for all it's worth--the parallels between the three main characters, the bad-poetry dialogue, the Chinatown-esque plot upending every five minutes. And you thought the battle scenes were exhausting.

It might be asking too much to endure, but Yimou has made the trip a beautifully sensory one. He's got a surplus of audio/visual trickery that distracts you just enough from the pinball mayhem of the narrative. The sound editors match up and punctuate each hoof clop, drum beat and body blow perfectly. The color schemes are simple and resonant, from the sharp yellow leaves that recall a Vermont autumn to the blends of greens in the bamboo forests. The cinematography produces crisp and expansive shots. The equestrian stunt work is real enough to terrify PETA, and Cirque de Soleil cast members have nothing on the film's agile bamboo fighters. Many scenes are choreographed, as beans play Pong off the drums in the "Echo game," and Jin and Leo keep precise symmetry in the final, tit-for-tat snowstorm showdown. And, not to be forgotten are the oft-hurled weapons--darts, machetes, boomerang daggers, sabers--that are players in their own way.

The characters don't develop as much as they morph to the story's every directional whim. Lau plays Leo as the steely figure no one should trust, and Kaneshiro's Jin/Wind, with his romantic lead duties, is the closest thing the film has to a good guy. The same might be said for Ziyi, except her Mei resolutely exudes ambiguity, even in her blindness, which takes a cue from last year's Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman. Her physical agility makes her the film's most enrapturing human presence--as was the case in Crouching--as does her beauty, more potent than any dagger considering what it reduces warriors like Jin and Leo to. Rarely does either quality get lost in the surrounding splendor. In fact, Yimou seems to make every tangible facet complementary in his efforts to create such a picturesque work, one that manages to stir both the head and the heart.