Review: House of Flying Daggers
Yimou Zhang follows Hero quickly with another show of drama with a dash of old fashioned tragedy and breath-taking martial arts. Lost is the intricate perspective storytelling, but the stylised directing style is still there. A simple story to start with will slowly complicate itself, while many key scenes will slowly work itself under your skin. Again, this is accomplished by timing dialogue, giving every scene texture with colors, subtle sound effects and an underlying dramatic score. This makes every scene having a poetic feel to it.
Again, helping this movie a few grades up is the mesmerising beautiful Ziyi Zhang, playing another complex and emotionally laden (at least, under the surface) role, effectively elbowing her way into the many upcoming leading actress awards for this year.8.