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| A plethora of colors adorn the three characters on this poster for Yimou Zhang's House of Flying Daggers |
859 AD, during the decline of the Chinese Tang dynasty, a police captain breaks a beautiful, blind rebel out of prison with unforeseen consequences.
House of Flying Daggers is written by Feng Li (Hero/Ying xiong (2002)), Bin Wang (Beauty Remains/Mei ren yi jiu (2005)) and co-writer/co-producer/director Yimou Zhang (Red Sorghum/Hong gao liang (1988)).
I don't much care for the specifically Asian style of filmmaking, where very long films consist of many scenes of cold and overly serious dialog, - sometimes about what seems trivial matters, - and House of Flying Daggers is exactly such an Asian film, which makes me give up and zone out. It takes solemnity to nauseating heights, is bereft of humor, taking place in a dream-like, unrealistic version of ancient China that feels so distant that at least audiences such as myself lose interest.
It does nevertheless have natural scenes of great beauty, ingenious action and a score by Shigeru Umebayashi (Like the Wind/Come il Vento (2013)), which is also beautiful.
Related post:
Yimou Zhang: The Great Wall/长城/Cháng Chéng (2016) - Damon appears foolish in unexciting, major US-Chinese monster turkey
Watch a 4-minute dance scene from the film here
Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: 92.8 mil. $
= Huge hit (returned 7.73 times its cost)
[House of Flying Daggers premiered 19 May (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition) and runs 119 minutes. Shooting took place from September - December 2003 in Ukraine and China, including Beijing. The film opened #19 to a 397k $ first weekend in 15 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #15 and in 1,189 theaters, grossing 11 mil. $ (11.9 %). North America was the 2nd biggest market; biggest was Japan with 24.4 mil. $ (26.3 %); and 3rd biggest was China with a recorded, somewhat suspiciously low 10 mil. $ (10.8 %). The film was nominated for an Oscar: Best Cinematography (Xiaoding Zhao (Little Big Soldier/Da bing xiao jiang (2010)), lost to Robert Richardson for The Aviator. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe, 9 BAFTAs, a European Film award and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 4/4 star review, translating to 4 notches over this one. Unsupported claims say that the film was an even bigger hit on home video in North America than theatrically. Zhang returned with Riding Along for Thousands of Miles/Qian li zou dan qi (2005); Ziyi Zhang (The Banquet/Ye yan (2006)) returned in 2046 (2004); Takeshi Kaneshiro (Turn Left, Turn Right/Heung joh chow heung yau chow (2003)) in Perhaps Love/Ru guo · Ai (2005); and Andy Lau (Blind Detective/Maang taam (2013)) in Triad Underworld/Gong woo (2004)). House of Flying Daggers is certified fresh at 87 % with a 7.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of House of Flying Daggers?
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