LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Dark Jedi 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!

Leofwine_draca This belated sequel to CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON retains chief actress Michelle Yeoh and the wuxia look and feel to the thing, but jettisons everything else. The overrated Ang Lee has gone to be replaced by the reliable Yuen Woo-Ping as director, and Donnie Yen has been brought in to replace Chow Yun-Fat in the lead hero stakes. Plus, with this being a Chinese/American co-production, the decision was made to shoot the thing in English with mainly western-speaking actors.It's a bit of a mixed bag of a film, with a very basic storyline which barely deserves mention (lots of different characters are in pursuit of a mystical sword). What it does offer, as a film, is plenty of action, with lots of fight scenes that surpass the ones in the original (I didn't think much of the first film at all, looking back on it). Yen and Yeoh are as reliable as ever, and the towering Jason Scott Lee looks virtually unrecognisable as the bad guy. The only issue is that, as with lots of modern Chinese films, the insistence on including lots of cheesy CGI scenes of flying people and the like looks ridiculous. It's about time that filmmakers realise that less is more when it comes to CGI (are you listening, Peter Jackson?) and that movies would be a lot better if they stuck to being more practical in approach.

gambitvoleur If you're looking to enjoy a corny, period-piece kung fu movie that hits the usual notes while offering a few well-choreographed fight scenes in interesting locations, this movie will do just fine. If, however, you were expecting a worthy sequel to the Oscar-winning Ang Lee film, you'll be disappointed.The acting—which is actually done in English this time—is generally mediocre, although it's hard separate it from the writing, which forces the characters to spout movie clichés and Confucian truisms. Michelle Yeoh is back to reprise her role, and happily so; she's the best actor in the film, and her character is the only tether to the original story besides the sword of destiny itself. The other players are new, and their characters can be divided into two categories: 1) generic members of a heroic motley crew, and 2) knockoff versions of people in the first film. In the first category we've got some of the usual suspects coming together to defend the titular sword. Battle-weary middle-aged warrior? Check. Young man who throws knives? Check. Token woman who also throws things? Check. A big strong guy and a self-taught drunken master? Check and Check. Movies that involve assembling a team can be great fun, whether it's The Magnificent Seven or Ocean's Eleven, and sometimes they can even be great cinema, like the original Seven Samurai. But this film does a lazy, perfunctory job of walking you through the steps. The whole crew convenes more-or-less in one place, and they instantly agree to take on the job, almost as if to say "Look, you know the deal right? Do we really have to put any time into it?" We hardly get to know them at all before battles ensue and the credits roll. This is not to say the movie isn't any fun; it's fun, it just isn't particularly good. In the second category, we have clones of characters from the original film: another thwarted-by-fate love interest for Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), another noble lady with secret sword skills and a criminal past, another young ruffian who acts as a (sort of) love interest for the lady. Aside from the redundancy in storytelling, the problem with treading old ground here is that it makes you sorely miss the acting of Chow Yun-Fat and Zhang Ziyi in the original. His implacable Zen smile and her impetuous, resentful glares reverberated off each other delightfully. Natasha Liu Bordizzo, who plays the distractingly-named "Snow Vase," doesn't quite have that talent. The relationship between Yu Shu Lien and Snow Vase peaked my interest, as did Snow Vase's ultimate backstory, but those moments were all too brief. Meanwhile the main villain is dull dull dull. His sword and chest plate are more interesting than he is, and everything we know about him comes only by word-of-mouth. His sorceress-type confederate, described as "the blind enchantress," offers more mystique, but neither one ends up having the personal significance or the flawed humanity of Jade Fox in Ang Lee's movie. And that hot, bloody memory of desert love that interrupts the main story in the first film? There's no counterpart here; it's only caged flirtation between the young warriors. Like all great mythical swords, the Green Destiny becomes a character itself, and in spite of everything, the fan in me was happy to see it appear again with jade appointments and calligraphy on the blade. But the sword is relegated to the background; it's just sort of there. It doesn't help Snow Vase achieve discipline; Silent Wolf never illustrates whatever legendary power it has, and so without a reminder from the first film, you're left wondering why everybody is obsessed with the weapon in the first place. Without the Lady of the Lake and its magical scabbard, Excalibur is just a cool name. So it is with Green Destiny in this movie. All of which makes it even harder to justify having this movie be a sequel instead of just churning out a new film.Gone are the masterful cinematic moments from the original; yes, there are lush landscapes and pretty side-views of caravans trotting through the forest. But these shots owe more to Lord of the Rings than to the first film. (Even one of the most striking fight sequences—a precarious scuffle atop a snow-dusted frozen lake—echoes one of the many endings in the third Hobbit movie.) The battle atop a multi-tiered fortress and the tavern brawl are amusing enough. But there is nothing that tops the hypnotic sway of Li Mu Bai balancing on a bamboo stalk or the fiery endlessness of the desert plateaus that made the first Crouching Tiger more than just an action flick. The soul-aching, mournful violins and the sense of beautiful tragedy in that first film have given way to borderline camp.So all in all, the whole thing feels like a really well-done, unlicensed fan-sequel. Many lovers of martial arts movies are accustomed to hammy acting and plots defined by tropes, so no doubt many viewers will enjoy Sword of Destiny. But one of the virtues of its predecessor was that it brought a wider audience into the fold. It was a small miracle when the first Crouching Tiger arrived in my little hometown, where even Oscar-winning foreign films don't often make it into local theaters. Even if most of the audience showed up hoping to see Asian people dance-fight in an action flick, they were inadvertently exposed to something more. Something artful. But this sequel, whatever its virtues may be, is just another one of the endless middle-of-the-road options on Netflix.

Duchino I had enjoyed "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) for its traditional Wushu style infused with poetic drama and elegant sword fighting – to our western eyes, the flying and soaring might look silly and obviously showing the ropes (as in harness cables), though the creative use of beautiful landscapes, costumes and feudal settings makes for an always inviting immersion. This following take has two major flaws in naming itself a sequel; the choice of going with an English-spoken version will open up better internationally, but it significantly detracts from the carefully crafted scenarios, culture and period – I only seek original versions with subs, so this was disappointing. Secondly, it simply aims to be more of a generic action and dagger flick with roughly cut dynamics, despite interesting characters and fighting scenes, like the original one on an iced lake. For me it reaches the sufficiency for the production value, but I'd have expected much more and much better.