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| Chow-Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Zhiyi,
Chang Chen, Lung Shung, Cheng Pei Pei |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Sir
Te (Sihung Lung): When it comes to emotions, even great heroes can
be idiots.
Two
martial arts masters struggle to retrieve a magical sword after it is
stolen by a young adventuress.
 Until
recently, the Asian martial arts cinema has proved unaccessible to a
major Western audience. And although movies like The Matrix and
Charlie's Angels have popularized some of the martial arts movie's
techniques, the genre hasn't seen a hit film in the West since the days
of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. With Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, Ang Lee, a director best known for his finely honed high-brow
dramas such as Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm,
has managed to pull off the impossible and present a movie that is both
true to its genre roots and accessible to a worldwide audience.
Crouching Tiger jettisons genre staples like the usual corny
slapstick humor, oblique plotting and amateurish acting, focusing instead
on the epic story, the performances and the eloquent staging of the
action. The spectacular fight scenes are staged to provide a better
overall view of the action, bringing an unprecedented smoothness and
balletic grace to the many impressive battles, each of which has its
own specific mood, function and place in the story. There will still
be complaints from both sides of the cultural divide: as hard as the
film works to clarify the many aspects of Chinese culture and myth that
play a role in the film, Wester viewers are still required to make quite
a leap of the imagination and leave a lot of preconceived notions behind
to enter this magical world. And the very fact that many story elements
that will be very familiar to Chinese viewers are so explicitly explained,
slows down the action and has brought the film some criticism from Chinese
audiences. The film's worldwide commercial success and critical acclaim
however illustrate how well Ang Lee has bridged the cultural gap, and
brought the best of both worlds to a fantasy epic that transports you
to another place and time that you can't help but wish to revisit again
and again.
Read our feature Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Meaning
for answers to the most frequently asked questions about this movie. |
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A
semi-illegal Region 0 DVD was widely circulated from Asia soon after
the film's American and European theatrical release. Identical regular
releases are now available for Region 1 and Region 2 [see separate
review]. The Superbit release (which served as a basis for this
review) is also the same for both regions.
The
anamorphic widescreen image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx.
2.35:1. The Superbit transfer has a higher bit rate than the regular
release, resulting in a visibly better image. Colors are richer, contrast
is better, and edge enhancement has been toned down from the original
transfer (though it remains noticeable here and there). The same source
print was used for this new transfer, which means that the same nicks
and scratches show up here, and film grain is still noticeable in many
shots.
The DTS sound
mix of the original Mandarin soundtrack is less noisy than the Dolby
Digital mix on the previous release, with a much more spatial soundstage
and clearer separation of sound effects from the score. Dynamics are
much better controlled in the higher and lower ends of the sonic spectrum,
yielding a more rewarding, subtler sound design than the original mix.
A Dolby Digital 5.1 mix of the dubbed English track is also on board.
Superbit DVDs carry no extras. The
menu screens feature that awful metallic clunkiness familiar from other
Superbit releases. Whoever thought this would look cool ought to have
their head examined.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: April
16, 2002
Click
here for IMDB info on Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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