What's love got to do, got to do with it? Plenty, according to Zhang Yimou. His breezy follow-up to the windswept Hero feels like a light northerly by comparison: there's less foliage blowing around, people can't walk on water and everything is primarily set in Matrix green. Yet the film revels immensely in having fun with its new laissez-faire self, propped up by a leafy paperback narrative loaded with the kind of love trigonometry and triple-crossing normally associated with a Hollywood B-film noir.

And with these things, there's usually killing to be done: blind L'Oreal representative Mei (Zhang Zi Yi, again...) has been watching too much Uma Thurman; law enforcers Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Leo (Andy Lau) think they can snuff her out. They do, invariably, before setting her free. Jin and Leo, you see, are the Starsky & Hutch of their time, devising that Jin break Mei out of jail posing as the smoldering rebel, escorting her escape which in turn, will lead them to where the bigger fish fry. That's all in theory, of course; there are sword fights, make-outs and bamboo forests in between. There's even the occasional flying dagger – so much for being mystical and abstract – the occurrence of which seems to sum up Zhang's new what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach best. Mostly, he's created a direct, no-nonsense Martial Arts flick that happens to be prettier than most, one which isn't about to confuse its audience with a curious but misleading title. Like where the hell were all those tigers and dragons anyway?—Tim Wong

» Zhang Yimou | China/HK | 2004