Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Collection

Donnie Yen

Michelle Yeoh

Jason Scott Lee

Natasha Liu Bordizzo

Harry Shum Jr.

Eugenia Yuan

Roger Yuan

Chris Pang

JuJu Chan

Woon Young Park

Darryl Quon

Veronica Ngo

Shuya Chang

Andrew Stehlin

David T. Lim

Min Kim

Trevor Sai Louie

Wang Kai

Gary Young

Zhou Xiaofei

Charles Chan

Yoson An

Kiana Chang Sigel

Milo Chang Sigel

Tim Wong

Sharon Zhang

Yuen Woo-Ping

John Fusco

Grant Major

Jeff Betancourt

Carlo Siliotto

Anthony Wong Wing-Fai

Shigeru Umebayashi

Wang Dulu

Newton Thomas Sigel

Ralph Winter

Sarah Bowen

Harvey Weinstein

Morten Tyldum

Pauline Fischer

Jill Cormack

Johnny Lee Man-Yiu

Ted Sarandos

Daniel Birt

Nick Bassett

Charlie Nguyen

Bey Logan

Nick Connor

Sarah Aubrey

Rick Nathanson

Peter Berg

Ngila Dickson

Sun Jianjun

George Hamilton

David Glasser

Bob Weinstein

David Thwaites

Ron Burkle

Anna Wang

La Peikang

Peng Zhang

Christopher Elke

Action

Adventure

Drama

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

The Weinstein Company

Yucaipa Films

Pegasus Taihe Entertainment

China

Per Gunnar Jonsson

I had no idea what this movie was about when I sat down to watch it on Netflix yesterday. I certainly had not watched its predecessor which, as I discovered afterwards, seems to have received quite high ratings.

To me this was a fairly decent movie quite adequate for a little Monday evening TV session. I would probably have been a wee bit disappointed if I had spent money and effort to see it in a movie theater though.

I did like the overall story and the cinematography. It did feel quite a bit like a old western in Asian setting. Make the sword a shipment of gold, the setting in the old west, add the hero and the gang of good guys with pistols instead of swords, do not forget the bad guy with his cronies and you have a good old fashioned Western. That is not really bad thing as far as I am concerned. The Asian setting and the Asian honor culture adds a lot of elegance to the movie.

The story is plain and simple with few surprises. As tradition dictates there is plenty of Asian martial arts going on. The fights are a little on the slow side and clearly intended for a rather low content rating. You never see anyone get really hurt. Sure people die but the deaths are quite bloodless. Personally I would have preferred a bit more hard hitting action. The fights almost became a bit comical at times.

I would say that the characters are okay. Not the best actors I have seen but I found them to be adequate. I did like the good guys. The bad guy could have done with a bit more charisma and the witch or whatever she was supposed to be felt underwhelming and underdeveloped.

One thing that annoyed me was this unrealistic flying around by some of the characters. Sure, it looked somewhat cool and very elegant but come on! Suddenly it appeared like the character became weightless and just floated through the air. Not very convincing.

On the whole I did enjoy the movie but, as I indicated above, it was not really a wow kind of movie. I have actually added the predecessor to my shopping list since that one got so good reviews. Speaking of reviews, on all the review sites I have looked this movie gets a rating of about 6 out of 10. Of course one site just had to stand out. Rotten Tomates! Their so called “critics” gave it a rotten rating with an abysmal score of 19%. What the f…? I know those self appointed “art” critics are too full of themselves to be taken seriously but that is a new low. Anyway, end of rant!

English

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny | Trailer [HD] | Netflix