Ryan's Journal

The director of Hero released a smaller-scale movie moderately concerned with Chinese history over the summer in China, and it's making its way to American theaters next month. Don't bother watching it, because you won't like it.

If Hero was a story-telling success, House of Flying Daggers is a failure. Hero happens to follow the standard Western mountain-peak story form, in a certain sort of way, which contributes in part to its profitable success during its run in America. In his multi-faceted approach, director Zhang Yimou builds to a climax and gracefully concludes with a denouement. Daggers has no such structure, failing to follow through on its main plot contrivance and wandering aimlessly in its ending phase with characters for which the audience has no pathos, especially one character who simply shows up for the last act. You will undoubtedly be bored if only because the movie does not follow your traditional storytelling patterns, to its discredit. Even the "plot twists" are predictable and unwieldy. The film has positive points, but you would be better served with a SportsCenter highlight reel from the film instead of sitting through the whole thing. I started playing with my phone during the ending, and I was just watching a DVD in my own home.

Zhang Ziyi is a disappointment, poorly playing her assigned "blind" stereotype. I am getting a little sick of seeing her in movies, playing the same character over and over again. I wonder if she cares that she's been typecast in a role she doesn't fit.

Finally, Daggers tries to say something about love, but it's "love" at an immature level, lusting and self-centered, mere shadows of even the sacrificial choices made by the protagonists in Yimou's previous outing Hero. There is nothing to take away except to hope that your own dealings with love of any color outstrip the poor examples in the film. He has better work; can he do better again? I hope so.