卧虎藏龙影评 英语

home | current issue | archives | search | about us | contact | links

A 19-year-old newcomer and a middle-aged veteran
steal the show from two legends of Hong Kong cinema

BY GARY MORRIS

Director Ang Lee would not be an obvious first choice to direct a Hong Kong martial arts film, even at a time when the genre is practically dead and thus ripe for resurrection by a highly regarded craftsman like Lee. His previous films — Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm are two — are careful, thoughtful works but also slow and stately to the point of torpor, traits that seem inimical to the whole HK aesthetic as seen in the work of megastars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li; producers and directors like Tsui Hark and John Woo; and films that cover a vast range of styles from the genderbending histrionics of the Swordsman series (starring the queen of HK androgyny, Brigitte Lin) to the homoerotic bloodbaths of Woo (Hard-Boiled, The Killer) to the sweet everyman epi