Paperjam

The House of Flying Daggers

Film // Jim // 31st December 2004

Most genre films are basically porn flicks in my humble opinion. In nearly all cases we are forced to sit through clumsy, poorly acted, painful plot and exposition as an excuse for the action we are really interested in seeing. Plus the best is always left for the final spectacular finale, it is not called the “Money Shot” for nothing.

The genre that fits this template most snugly is the kung fu flick. We have all sat through some low budget piece of crap with a ridiculous plot and hilarious dubbing in order to see someone get a particularly spectacular kicking, or Jackie Chan smashing his head open for real yet again.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was something of a departure it had a complex plot with emotional resonance, proper acting, high production values and crucially some fantastic martial arts action with people flying about all over the place. This was followed by the visually amazing, if politically iffy, Hero. A film which was less elegant in some ways than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and fell more neatly into the plot, fight, plot, fight, plot, really big fight pattern.

The latest entry in the series of posh martial arts epics is The House of Flying Daggers (what a great title) directed by Yimou Zhang who made Hero. The main cast includes Takeshi Kaneshiro who was in the barking sci fi flick Returner, Andy Lau who was in the marvellous Infernal Affairs and the amazingly ubiquitous Ziyi Zhang who was also in Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

HOFD: Twisty plot, big fights

The paper-jam viewing of HOFD took place at the Coventry Showcase cinema which smells a bit weird and shows the films out of focus. Things weren’t helped by the middle aged couple sitting next to me who were having a full volume conversation for the opening minutes, a polite request to shut up didn’t go down too well but they kept it down so the rest of us could get on with enjoying the film and the onset of deep vein thrombosis brought about by the strangely uncomfortable seating.

HOFD (set in the time of the Tang Dynasty) is about a couple of policemen in the employ of the state attempting to assassinate the head of a terrorist faction which is causing the Emperor some concern. The key to their plan is Mei (Zhang) a blind dancer/pro at the local brothel who may be a member of the mysterious Flying Daggers.
After capturing Mei following a truly spectacular song and dance/dust up at said establishment the coppers stage an escape and trick Mei into helping them infiltrate the group.
Along the way there are some more spectacular fight scenes involving some fairly nifty knife throwing antics and quite a surprising amount of throat slashing.

Ziyi Zhang: Ubiquitous, Blind

After a promising start the film descends into a standard pattern of plot, fight, plot, fight. On the plus side, the plot elements are fairly twisty involving all sorts of double agent chicanery and unrequited tragic desires. However towards the end, things really do drag on quite a bit and you’ll be praying for the big fight at the end to kick off asap.

The big fight is indeed epic, going on so long that the season seems to change from Autumn to Winter in the meantime. When the end comes it is a strange mix of mad sword fighting, the Monty Python knight who gets his arms cut off and says “Just a scratch”, The Snowman and that bloke in the Austin Powers films who says ,”I’m not quite dead yet”.

I hate to say it but you might want to wait for the DVD so you can fast-forward through the dull bits, just like you have to with those other films. Ahem.

Some links of interest...

About the Wuxia genre

Find out why Wuxia is not the same as Kung Fu

Ziyi Zhang Fan Site

Or is it Zhang Ziyi? Everything you could possibly want to know is here.

Andy Lau Sings

Acting is not enough for workaholic Andy, check out his musical stylings here

Is HOFD Racist?

Is this what the IMDB has come to? Oh dear.