House of Flying Daggers (2005)

House of Flying Daggers

This movie is a wonderful experience to watch. It's sublime, passionate and has many moments that inspire the heart to sing. I love the Chinese culture and found this movie like stepping into a cool pond of water - it awakened all my senses.

I highly recommend it. October 4, 2008

The film is enjoyable, but the Blu-Ray transfer is worthless

This was one of the Blu-Ray discs that I bought at the same time I bought my player, as I was guessing that the vibrant colors of this film would look great in HD. Unfortunately, there is so much film grain and visual noise that I had to drastically reduce the backlight and the color saturation on my LCD in order to make it less distracting. But this eliminated the primary artistic virtue of the film: its colorful palette. If this had been what Blu-Ray had to offer, I would have returned the player immediately, as I had seen better picture quality from upscaled DVDs and from HD downloads in 720p. Thankfully, I was guided towards "I, Robot" and "Ratatouille" and saw what Blu-Ray really has to offer, and it is worth the price of admission. But the shoddy presentation of "House of Flying Daggers" nearly soured me on the whole experience before I really got started.

I rather enjoyed this film on standard-definition cable TV when I first saw it. The colors are marvelous, the fight scenes are fluid, and the plot is simple but effective. The main character, Wind, is kind of a jerk at first, but he grows on you a little by the end. I would describe the acting as competent, even a bit above-average for what you'd expect. For a foreign language film, we English-speaking viewers need decent acting through facial expressions and body language, and there's enough here to adequately serve the story.

I don't know what equipment was used to shoot this film, but I hope that a great transfer could be done one day when Blu-Ray has settled into its place as the dominant disc format. This is the type of film that has great potential as an HD viewing experience, but it hasn't come close to realizing that quite yet. If you have and enjoy the DVD of this movie, I would recommend against buying the Blu-Ray at this time. August 24, 2008

great

i watch this all the time, it runs great everytime, great quality, nice box. no damages. July 28, 2008

the film is Excellent!!

This movie makes the matrix look like a chick flick. The effects and use of bold colors in this film are amazing. Once you get past having to read subtitles, the movie is pure excitement and magic.
July 23, 2008

House of Flying zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz's

Um........BORING!!!
I loved Crouching Tiger, and I loved Hero even more.
I was expecting a brilliant picture like the other two I mentioned but...........BORING!!!
I think I fell asleep twice during the movie. I forced myself to watch it again.
I didn't fall asleep the second time, but I still found the story to be boring, unmemorable and criminally uninteresting.
Thank the gods Curse of the Golden Flower came out, that movie totally smokes this one.
Granted, it may not have as much of the high wire acrobatics of Flying Daggers but the story is so much better than this um......romance.
So what's good about House of Flying Daggers?
It's pretty to look at, and has some great high wire martial effects.
But if you've seen Crouching, or Hero, you've seen it done better with much better stories.
I can't recommend this one except for die hard swords and romance fans.
Not recommended.
July 9, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...