“House of Flying Daggers,” the second film in theaters this year from Chinese director Zhang Yimou, provides an interesting companion piece to the first — the Oscar-nominated “Hero” — if only because it’s slightly more rooted in reality.
The characters still soar through the air with gravity-defying balletic agility, showing off eye-popping martial arts skills, but the leaves on the trees behind them aren’t a radioactive shade of fuchsia when they do it.
Both feature love triangles, but “Flying Daggers” (starring Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau) is a romance wrapped around an action movie, while “Hero” was more of an action movie with a bit of romance tucked inside of it. “Hero” also is the meatier of the two.
The latest offering from the director of such lush dramas as “Raise the Red Lantern” is a dazzling celebration of style over substance — cleverly staged and sumptuously photographed, but in the end, little more than an art-house soap opera.
None of the fabulous-looking characters is who he or she initially seems — everyone is fooling everyone else, everyone is secretly in love with everyone else, and everyone is willing to die an elaborately choreographed death for the ones they love.
Zhang and co-writers Li Feng and Wang Bin don’t flesh out their passionate young lovers, but the characters do have the benefit of being bathed in golden lighting and wrapped in luxurious costumes of orange, green and blue. This is a visual medium above all else, which “Flying Daggers” reminds us of time and time again.
The delicately beautiful Zhang Ziyi — who also appeared in “Hero” and in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which sparked this trend of hyperstylized martial arts romances — plays Mei, a blind courtesan during the Tang Dynasty in the year 859.
Secretly, though, she’s a member of an underground army called the House of Flying Daggers, and her skills give her away when she’s forced to participate in an elaborate dance called the Echo Game. In sort of an ancient version of the flashing-and-beeping game Simon, police captain Leo (Lau) throws rocks at a series of drums, and Mei must hit them in the same order with her hands, feet, scarves, whatever, simply by listening to the sounds they make.
This is the first of many scenes in which director Zhang effectively uses special effects: The camera appears to bang around from drum to drum as if it were a rock that’s been thrown, too. He employs the same trick later during a similar (and deadlier) version of the game in a bamboo forest.
Anyway, Mei is captured, but a second police captain, Jin (Kaneshiro) — disguised as a warrior named Wind who’s sympathetic to the Flying Daggers’ cause — rushes in to help her escape. In truth he wants her to lead him back to the group’s hidden leader.
The two go on an extended adventure, with policemen and Flying Daggers members on their tails. (A battle in a bamboo forest, in which Jin and Mei take on an endless stream of baddies who dangle and sway from the tree tops, is a true wonder of sight and sound.)
They also fall in love. But things get complicated when Leo reappears and it’s revealed that he and Mei were once in love, too. Here’s where things get really soapy, complete with a duel to the death in a field that’s a meteorological marvel: It goes from peak autumnal foliage season to a blinding blizzard in a matter of minutes.
But these strappingly handsome, seemingly immortal young men keep clashing — which would be downright comical if it weren’t rendered so artistically.