Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

Rating: B

In Chinese, with English subtitles.
It seems "Wutan" is a form of martial arts which, in addition to teaching old standbys like the groin kick, also trains you to fly through the air like Underdog and catch blow darts with chopsticks. Faster than you can say, "Where do I sign up?" we meet Chow Yun Fat, a virtual Tiger Woods of Wutan who decides it's time to hang up the chuka sticks and call it a career. He and fellow Wutan warriorette Michelle Yeoh harbor a lifelong mutual respect which somewhere along the way became a burning love. Unfortunately, both were too proper to ever acknowledge their feelings for each other. As a result, they've spent their lives serving others as honorable warriors, while denying their own personal happiness. On the other side of the village lives the spoiled brat daughter (Zhang Zi Yi) of the local governor, Governor Yu. Zi Yi longs for a life where she is free to roam the land unburdened by earthly obligations and personal responsibilities, and views the romanticized life of a Wutan warrior as the perfect solution. Join the army and see the world - some things never change. On a lark, Zi Yi steals Yun Fat's legendary sword, and takes to the rooftops to make her escape in true Wutan fashion.

When she swipes the sword and flees, she wears one of those ninja veil-things which covers the lower half of her face. Although her identity should still be painfully obvious to anyone without a seeing-eye dog, the disguise seems to work on many of the people in the film (presumably the same muttonheads who could never tell Clark Kent was Superman). When the chase over the rooftops leads them to Governor Yu's house, some of the townsfolk try to blame it all on Yu. Even the Governor himself seems perplexed, making us wonder what the hell's the matter with Yu.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will remind you of The Matrix even if you've never seen The Matrix. Of course, all the rumpus over Zi Yi being a natural Wutan master harks back to long before Neo ever found out he was "the one," and shares elements with the plots of many earlier films. (The first person to say "hero's journey" gets a fat lip from me, I swear.) But when Yeoh and Zi Yi have an extended fight scene in a white padded room, I fully expected Yeoh to bend over her opponent at one point and rhetorically inquire, "Is this air we're breathing?"

To director Ang Lee's credit, there's more to the story than just a young Wutan master (mistress?) coming of age. The scenes between Yun Fat and Yeoh succeed in interweaving feelings of regret with the satisfaction of having lived an honorable life. Zi Yi comes across as a loose cannon, blessed with an ability beyond her level of maturity, but not entirely unsympathetic. The bad news is that mixed in with all the good scenes are plenty of marginal ones. When Zi Yi is kidnapped (sort of) by a desert bandit, the whole movie threatens to derail into a chick flick (shudder). Zi Yi gradually falls in love with him (or thinks she does), a fact she shows by conking him on the head with a rock. Then later, she stabs him in the heart, although he doesn't really seem to mind. I just can't stand mushy scenes like this. When the episode finally ends, and we get back to people soaring through the tree tops, the whole audience breathes a collective sigh of relief.

The aerial flying scenes, although choreographed by the same person who guided the fight scenes in The Matrix, are nowhere near as convincing. In The Matrix, care was taken to make every gravity-bending stunt look almost possible. Here, there's little cause and effect between the people's actions and their subsequent flights through the air, making it painfully obvious they're suspended from wire harnesses. As a result, much of it comes off looking quite silly. The shots where the players run along the walls of the buildings are the best in the early going. But not until Zhang Zi Yi battles a horde of male attackers inside an inn late in the film does the action really get your blood pumping.

I fear it's time once again to assume my role of resident curmudgeon and point out here that the cat has no pajamas. Although I enjoyed Crouching Tiger and recommend seeing it, the film is not the work of genius the media is implying. If you see the film, ask yourself what critics would be saying if this was a mainstream Hollywood offering. More likely than not, they'd be deriding it for its many silly and derivative elements. But because it's from a respected "art house" director, in a foreign language, and deals with a foreign culture, they're eager to overlook its faults and proclaim it the greatest thing since quilted toilet paper.

"You spoil everything."

"Glad to know I made a difference, ma'am."