Reviewed by Tim Wong

VAGUELY, I can trace my first experience in martial arts cinema to a half-empty Chinese restaurant, a bored Maître d', and the climactic last third of Dragon Inn, beamed out in non-subtitled Cantonese via an in-house Karaoke system. Don't get me wrong – it was an ambience killer, for sure, and although in my early teens, I couldn't help but feel a little shocked at the all the impaling and blood spurting and male eyeliner going on. But as strange encounters go, I owe a lot to Serendipity for that afternoon – she shoved me through the looking glass, and taught me from that day onwards there's more to martial arts than Ralph Macchio and Enter the Dragon.


Ten years and a whole lot of catching up later, I'm confronted with House of Flying Daggers – the third major wu xia¹ epic in four years. The genre's current output treads baby steps by prolific Shaw Brothers through-to-mid-90's Hong Kong standards, yet largely thanks to 2000's breakout foreign success, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is now enjoying a leisurely revival of international proportions. No longer must the average punter stumble upon a neglected kung-fu movie at the video store, come face-to-face with one at the occasional film festival, or in my instance, get lucky at a midsummer's Yum Cha session. As of now, getting exposed to the wonderful world of Asian martial arts is as easy as following the queue, and buying a ticket at your nearest multiplex.

Currently, that "as of now" goes by the name of Hero (in NZ cinemas now), soon to be followed by Flying Daggers (due for mid-January release). Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou is responsible for both these films; he's really just a kid in a candy store, liberated, and finally splurging on a long-repressed guilty pleasure for the martial arts movie. His two sorties to date add considerable weight to the whole revivalist theory – especially amongst a market dominated by Canto-pop star vehicles and Hollywood-approved logic – but also suggest through their universal popularity and cinematic panache as much genre reinvention as chic renaissance.

And reinvent he has, drawing on everything from The Sting to Bridget Jones to Mills & Boon, all bundled together in the world's most self-absorbed triangular romance since Pearl Harbor. Apart from Ang Lee's film, I can't remember the last time a martial arts movie was so lathered in the soapsuds of love (only Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time comes barely to mind), where such unshakable, genre-specific codes in heroism and honour are quickly discarded in the name of Zhang Ziyi. The girl can't get much more ubiquitous, whoring the entire aforementioned triptych of wu xia films, the cross-over East/West success Rush Hour II, and a silly credit card commercial. And yet, she's managed to break through the pretty-china-doll veneer in a standalone, training wheel-less performance, bumping aside her previous freeform bitchiness in Crouching Tiger, and recent understudying to Maggie Cheung in Hero.

And so begins House of Flying Daggers, a kind of Baz Luhrmann redux of star-crossed Shakespearian angst. Think Zhang Ziyi's Diary as a Tang Dynasty fantasy, where she's torn between square-jawed ruffian Andy Lau and the Pantene-conditioned locks of Takeshi Kaneshiro – both whom get to literally fight for her affection with the sort of skill and finesse sorely lacking in every pathetic Hugh Grant/Colin Firth exchange. Of course, it's never as black and white as that, but the lines of indecision are more clearly defined; whereas Renée Zellweger's Brit-dilemma could manifest into anything as trivial as a toss up between granny pants and a thong, Zhang Ziyi needs only pick one guy, and dump the other. Easier said than done, mind you, spanning an entire film's duration, multiple fight scenes and several plot bombshells before coming to a decision.

Love triangles aren't an uncommon movie premise, but implanting one here into the martial arts framework is just part of the makeover. And whilst the dog-eared narrative isn't quite the leap of faith made in the colour-coded chapters of Hero, Flying Daggers is on its own an eclectic mishmash of existing thriller, crime-caper and romance scenarios. Indeed, the film dispenses with the master-pupil-vengeance device, as well as demoting the notion of a moral cause or a greater good – normally the thrust that drives any martial arts film from A to B – to an open-ended ellipsis just when we're expecting the critical mass of an epic, battle royale. No, in Zhang Yimou's universe, the fate of the world rests perilously on the all-conquering shoulders of love, where within the washing cycle of an ominous snowstorm, our trio of lovers stand in a three-way Mexican standoff, prepared to once and for all resolve their differences with the aid of some high melodrama and a sharp edge or two.

Zhang's films also arise from an intensely aesthetic point of view, and play their part in the revitalisation of a modern martial arts cinema; filling gaps in what was prior to Crouching Tiger a significant lull. And it's only really when Chris Doyle – a Rockstar of cinematographers – got hold of a lens in Hero, did the genre transcend from the kinetic, visceral giddiness of trademark Hong Kong-ism, to revisionist ancient combat as painterly, heightened expressionism. Like Hero, the art of fighting in Flying Daggers isn't always bound by a confrontation between good and evil, or even in the more time-honored sense, a challenge of skill between two warriors. Zhang Ziyi's opening act – a ballet of sight vs. sound – is a visual gesture in grace and seduction, designed to hook the viewer in the same way a traditional opening fight scene would, and all while breaking the masculine norm of genre martial arts. It's in many ways a return to the King Hu style; just pluckier, invigorated by wing-tipped camera work and wild CG effects.

Needless to say, Flying Daggers is more Matrix than Swan Lake, with action punctuated by epileptic film speeds and the occasional bullet-time phase – perhaps a conscious move away from the smothering "beauty" of Hero, a term it seems to have monopolized. In fact, the images on display here aren't even Chris Doyle-assisted (shot instead by an unknown Zhao Xiaoding), resulting in a film that's not quite the rarified visual delicacy, but at the same time feels unchained from the grip of the Drunken Master's authorship – something capable of overwhelming even the grandest of films. If it's a rougher form of beauty, then it works, traversing a familiar, just world-wearier route through China's picturesque, and culminating beneath the celestial green canopies of a never-ending bamboo forest – a sequence sure to knock the socks off Ang Lee's previous take on the classic martial arts set piece.

If Hero really did rip the genre to shreds through plot deconstruction and astronomic martial artistry, Flying Daggers can't be too far behind, but might be considered an alternate rendering to Crouching Tiger's romance lit. discourse; more so than a brand new direction in martial arts cinema. Yet, it's possibly the most unconventional of all three, privy to an almost pulp narrative of ebb and flow, and ultimately, a redundant use for chivalry in the proper wu xia sense. As hard as our heroes try, it's never about good trumping evil, or patriotic sacrifice. Even the lines between hero and villain are smudged into ambiguity, because in the end, it's all about the girl. They say love makes the world go round, and as far as House of Flying Daggers is concerned, even the martial arts movie can accommodate that notion once in a while.