The Touch (2002) User Reviews

Crouching Tiger and the Last Crusade

[devinabellon · 4/10 · 1 January 2003]

Unoriginal, poorly produced, poorly acted, and ultimately disappointing, this film takes the beautifully orchestrated acrobatic moves of Crouching Tiger (not to mention the leading lady), but executes them with an awkwardness surpassed only by the overused blue-screen and computer-generated special effects. Some of the action scenes were well done, but as a whole, it failed to bring anything more than what most low-grade action films offer.

The many attempts to inject humor into the film, via the classic "moronic American idiot" who bumbles around the film acting like he just left the set of latest Police Academy installment, is so out of place that it annoyinging disrupts the flow of the film and leaves the audience to wonder, "what the hell is that guy doing in this movie?"

Perhaps most disappointing were the performances of the two lead characters, who after promising roles in "Crouching Tiger" and "Birthday Girl" seemed to have settled for whatever script was tossed their way.

I rated this film a 4. It was compelling enough that I stayed to see the ending, but in the end, I wish that I hadn't. Utterly forgettable and disappointing...

"Just" average

[vw_hk89 · 5/10 · 4 June 2006]

As a fan of Yeoh's films, I desperately felt I needed to see this film, I was impressed with the trailer but then it all led to disappointment when I saw the film. I was aware that the film was receiving bad reviews but when I saw it, it was not as bad as I thought it was but there were some major faults.

The use of incredible locations in the film was a plus, the story line sounded perfect for an adventure film and there was that wonderful combination of action, romance and comedy

I felt that one of the main flaws with the film was the ensemble of actors; though they do look good in their roles, the way they portrayed their characters was rather poor.

Yeoh's performance was not of a satisfactory level, but provided she got to use some martial arts in the film, I was happy.

Ben Chaplin, who plays Eric,provides most of the comic relief for the film, particularly when he attempts to sing a love song in Mandarin Chinese but forgets the words half way through the song. I am still wondering whether the character Bob was even meant to be funny at all as he was just pathetic throughout the film.

Brandon Chang and Margaret Wang who play Lily and Tong are newcomers, of all the actors in the film, their performances were the most disappointing; my reason is mainly that when they spoke, it sounded as if they were on a "lets talk English programme", they were expressionless and bland with their acting.

Another flaw was the use of special effects in the film, particularly in the climax that takes place in the burning cave, at the beginning of the scene, the flames looked real, but whoever was in charge of the cinematography made a huge mistake after applying the flames because the fire looked incredibly fake afterwards as well as a list of other faults concerning the CGI.

Despite the faults outweighing the good points, I did enjoy the film, but it was merely average.

Genre movie without big surprises

[unbrokenmetal · 6/10 · 28 August 2005]

"The Touch" is an adventure movie in the tradition of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". It tells the story of a Chinese family of artists who specialized in difficult jumps for many generations. Only such a jump, seeming impossible to anyone else, will make it possible to obtain a holy treasure. Two family members are kidnapped by a treasure hunter (Richard Roxburgh) to get the treasure for him. Yin (Michelle Yeoh), being the head of the family after the demise of her father, pursues them into the desert.

Genre movie without big surprises, but well made (except for the final fight which looks like computer game inspired green screen effects), featuring a female star who successfully avoids any Lara Croft similarities and uses her scarf both as a weapon and a swing rope. "The Touch" was shot in places where nobody else was allowed to film before. The landscapes of Tibet are impressive and make the movie more memorable than the thin plot deserves.

An amazing film !!

[ruriks · 9 August 2002]

I just saw The Touch at a theater here in China. That movie is fantastic !! Michelle Yeoh is great, amazingly charismatic, beautiful, and a remarkable martial artist. Ben Chaplin is great too, really at ease and perfectly believable. the movie itself is an amazing adventure flick, very funny by moments, and with an intense ending. Don't miss it, really !

it's a little bit funny

[Allansia · 2/10 · 22 August 2003]

This film could have been good : Michelle Yeoh, Ben Chaplin, Richard Roxburgh (the funny duke in Moulin Rouge!) and Basil Poledouris (soundtrack). Instead of a good action/fantasy movie, we have this... thing. The story is so stupid, the special effects are very terrible. Oh, yes, you can see many good looking Asian hunks (Karl's group), but these good looking guys were not supposed to be the only interesting thing in The Touch. Poor Michelle Yeoh...

Part Indy Jones, Tomb Raider and Crouching Tiger and not worth watching

[sjculb3 · 2/10 · 28 May 2006]

Ben Chaplin (Birthday Girl) plays Eric, a former acrobat turned thief for a wealthy, but deadly collector. When Eric finally steals an artifact of great importance to his acrobatic foster family, he decides to steal it back and begin a treasure hunt with his former child love, Michelle Yeoh.

The plot is the same as pretty much all the films of the genre. A group of noble treasure hunters goes out on a dangerous journey but is pursued by a killer and along the way they find love, loose a few people and end up happy.

The first hour you will admire that the sets aren't cheap and Ben Chaplin does a halfway decent job of playing Eric. Michelle is fair at best and the rest of the cast are awful. The rest of the film makes you wish you could fast forward to the climax and the treasure part....when you get there you will wish you hadn't wasted your time.

A Good Idea Gone Bad

[NIXFLIX-DOT-COM · 5/10 · 27 August 2003]

I guess it was inevitable that someone would remake INDIANA JONES with a female in the lead. Then again, American TV has been doing this for a few years now, what with RELIC HUNTER and the Angelina Jolie movie TOMB RAIDER.

Essentially a starring vehicle for producer Michelle Yeoh, THE TOUCH isn't all bad. Yeoh is good as the Indiana Jones wannabe, and Ben Chaplin is not half bad as her love interest/adopted brother. The inclusion of the two siblings, though, brings the whole thing down.

Also, a finale involving heavy CGI and a lot of ridiculous wireworks sinks the movie. INDIANA JONES was immensely popular, and it didn't need flaming arrows shooting all over the place or floors being engulfed by a sea of flames. In the end, the movie was just too bloated for its own good.

5 out of 10

(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review of this movie or full-length reviews of other foreign films)

Michelle Yeoh is better than her movies

[peternepstad · 4/10 · 28 August 2010]

After TOMORROW NEVER DIES Michelle Yeoh was on top of the world. But instead of continuing her Hollywood career (which knowing Hollywood would have been restricted to very stereotypical Asian woman roles anyway), she began her own new production company and launched THE TOUCH, an Indiana Jones like caper, as her first picture. International distributors lined up around the block to get dibs on this hot property, shot mostly in English to get that international angle. But what was finally released was poorly paced by director Peter Pau, who seems unable to bring energy to a scene to save his life, and saddled with the worst CGI effects I have seen in any movie in a long, long time. The retro-oriental adventure concerns a map which reveals the location of some magic Tibetan artifact which looks like a glowing snow-cone, and retrieval of the artifact by Yeoh's family of acrobats, specially trained through many generations for that purpose. Hint to the filmmakers: When making a movie about a band of acrobats, please cast people who can actually do a little acrobatics. Instead, we have the likes of newcomer Brandon Chang, who not only does not seem capable of a somersault, is a terrible actor to boot. Ben Chaplin is Yeoh's love interest, and Richard Roxburgh is the British bad guy. Although improving the CGI won't improve the bad acting and plodding direction, maybe it would fix the climactic ending, in which fire, stone, rope, and bodies in motion all absolutely refused to obey any known laws of physics. Michelle Yeoh deserves better than starring in her own vanity pictures.

Derivative and tedious

[lester88 · 3/10 · 9 August 2002]

The only redeeming part of this movie was the sumptuous cinematography and settings used. Simply breathtaking.

OK, now for the meat of it. It felt to me that Michelle Yeoh was leveraging off her dubious success in Tiger/Dragon and Tomorrow Never Dies to bridge the gap from HK chop-schlocky movies to something passably "international". Boy did she ever set her career back with this stinker. The plot was horribly derivative, and full of holes. The action sequences, albeit nicely choreographed, felt rushed and the fight pacing was jerky and obviously wired. The special effects were second-rate at best, with obvious seams visible and CGI clearly recognizable.

Roxburgh and Chaplin did their best in the movie, and Yeoh was shockingly wooden.

I had an attack of the giggles part way through the movie, and it worsened with the ludicrous plot developments, culminating in a full-fledged laughing attack when the Tibetan monk at the end spoke so badly they had to subtitle him... even though he was attempting to speak English.

In summary, I feel somewhat insulted at having had to pay to see this movie.

actually pretty good

[blncub · 7/10 · 2 March 2005]

What's wrong with people? whoever started comparing it to "crouching tiger..."? of course you would be disappointed if you expect a similar film, but that's like comparing "the pianist" with the upcoming "king kong" just because adrian brody is in both of them.

the touch is actually not even a typical hongkong movie. it feels more like a really good American adventure movie from the early 90's - at the end i couldn't even stop myself from thinking about indiana jones. the film has a nice flow, a great chemistry between the leads and some great goofy humor. and most impressive of all, some amazing cinematography. just those beautiful landscapes alone are worth watching "the touch".

sure, the special effects in the final are really bad, they actually look like they have never been finished. some actors are pretty bad, too. but this movie is not about excellent acting but about harmless fun - just everything a nice action adventure should be.

don't expect anything else and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

This movie is beyond comprehension

[donotouchthis · 1/10 · 10 August 2002]

Action, Adventure, Romance, Humor all rolled into one!

I think not. Who in the right mind would watch something like this? It is one thing to go into a bad movie knowing you are going to expect one. I would rate this movie worse than Mortal Kombat II.

The action moves overdone... this is just not the Matrix nor the Crouching Tiger.

Adventure is mediocre at best because it does not make any sense.

Whoever wrote this script needs to get their brains rewired because anyone will puke at the sight of any of the romantic interactions.

Humor? Yeah leave this one for the last because they are all dry. At least Jackie Chan has a funny personality which make his attempt honorable. Michelle on the other hand is like Jean Claude Vandamme making his jokes. And the entire cast is just a joke.

The funniest part is when it premiered in Malaysia, Michelle Yeoh was so adamant about destroying every pirated copy of this movie. I can see why.... This production should pass GO and head to the dumpster.

Much better than I was led to expect

[simon_booth · 8/10 · 12 January 2003]

The Touch is Michelle Yeoh's first movie as producer, executive producer and writer (as well as star), and the first movie from her new production company. Now Michelle Yeoh is a smart and sensible woman (and she can kick ass with the best), so expectations for this big budget production with Peter Pau in the director's chair were naturally high - certainly I had high hopes for it. That changed when it came out and it seemed to be universally acclaimed a major disappointment. I almost decided to pass it over completely, but you know sometimes you have to see a certain movie even if you know it's going to be bad, 'cause it's still a 'significant' or 'important' film in some sense.

Thanks to all the negative press, my expectations for the movie were much lower when I sat down to watch it. I mean, we're talking the kind of expectations that make The Blacksheep Affair look like a good film... so it's not really a surprise that I found myself enjoying The Touch. But I mean I found myself *really* enjoying it. A lot!

First with the bad, the reasons people were presumably disappointed. There are some very cheesy moments in places, moments and lines that feel too artificially inserted, too 'script'. There's some bad acting in places - some from the bad guy's goons but most notably from Brandon Chang, who plays Michelle's younger brother (his girlfriend was pretty bad too, but she didn't have as much chance to show it). And most notably there are some really terrible special effects in the final climax - about 15 years out of date

But then with the good! First surprise, it's really funny! Most of the humour comes from the guest Gwei Los Ben Chaplin and Richard Roxburgh, both of whom have really good characters and some brilliant lines. They also break a long tradition of white actors in HK films by being really good, and not at all annoying. Richard Roxburgh's villain in particular is a charismatic classic. Then there's the story, which is all quite cheesy but reasonably involved and well developed. It's a good old fashioned adventure yarn. And then there's the production values... especially the great sets and locations filmed beautifully by Peter Pau. The soundtrack is really good too, though it sounds very Hollywood (I'm not normally a fan of Hollywood's overblown and generally forgettable soundtracks, but I like this one).

It must be said that The Touch does in many ways feel more like a Hollywood movie than a Hong Kong movie - the fact that it is 95% filmed in English undoubtedly being part of it. Hong Kong film makers normally fail miserably when they attempt to make a Hollywood style movie, but I think that this case represents a near success. If it weren't for those dreadful special effects I think it would have a very good chance of competing on the Hollywood distribution circuits. And I believe the production company have taken the unusual step of hiring a different firm (the normally excellent Centro) to completely redo the special effects for a US release. This may be one case where the US version of a HK movie actually improves on the original.

One thing that is expected of a Hong Kong movie starring Michelle Yeoh is obviously a high calibre of action. This is perhaps where the movie disappoints, as there isn't as much action in the film as I expect most viewers would have liked. There are a couple of fight scenes that show off Michelle's skills well, but Philip Kwok's choreography isn't all that exciting unfortunately. Not bad, but not up to the standard of Michelle's fights in Royal Warriors, for example. Especially disappointing is the final climax, which should have been a raw bone crunching showcase of martial arts prowess but is in fact a limp showcase of terrible CGI. Bad call to go the special effects route, Michelle!

If I hadn't had my expectations lowered by those who saw the movie before me, I guess there's a fair chance I'd have ended up disappointed in The Touch too. Because I wasn't expecting too much I found much more to enjoy than I bargained for. In fact, I'd say I enjoyed the movie more than any other 2002 Hong Kong movie I can think of (not saying much admittedly, since 2002 was a terrible year for HK movies). It's a movie I will happily watch again (though I'll wait for the US release perhaps) and have no hesitation recommending to others.

Enough funny with Ben and good action with Michele

[lia00027 · 7/10 · 20 November 2002]

I like the story enough, because it's fun. Ben is make it funny especially when he stole the "heart" that is the best part from him.

To bad in this movie even the story and the actors is good enough, but the visual effect is bad. I really can see that the fire is make from computer (not like Hollywood usually made), and when they are in the cage they are not looks like in the cage but in the studio.

This movie is GREAT from the location, which they made in Tibet and the acrobatic circus.

And the Glitzy Martial Arts Mimics Just Go On and On

[gradyharp · 3/10 · 21 October 2006]

'Tian mai chuan qi' (AKA 'Touch') follows in the well paid path of the really gorgeous films that came out of Hong Kong and China (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, etc) but it raises the question 'Just how many of these small story visual epics are palatable in repetition? Michelle Yeoh recognizes successful financial formulas when she sees one and is at the crux of this flimsy little caper film, cashing in on the popularity of the genre.

The story is slight: a relic (ny the monks of Dan Huang. The monks call upon a family of acrobats (of course with a history of hundreds of years of secret training on how to accomplish this mission) to retrieve it. Pak Yin Fay (the very beautiful Michelle Yeoh) and her brother Tong (Brandon Chang) take on the mission - with a few glitches: Pak Yin Fay's old boyfriend Erik (Ben Chaplin) is a ne're-do-well thief who possesses the necessary Heart medallion required to open the location of the Sharira. But wouldn't you know, there appears an unscrupulous nasty guy Karl (Richard Roxburgh, a fine Australian actor out of Moulin Rouge, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Oscar and Lucinda, etc) who causes no end of problems at the site and initiates the reason for making this film: an extended martial arts dance on pillars above a CGI fire in the tomb - a place where nearly everyone in the cast is cremated after gallant swinging and flying! Yet of course it all ends well with the Sharira being returned to the happy monks in Tibet.

Corny, yes, but if martial arts films with lots of color and vistas of deserts and the holy city in Tibet stimulate you, then this film is worth your time. Michelle Yeoh is beautiful to watch, and both Ben Chaplin and Richard Roxburgh are fine enough actors to almost make you forget the pointless shallow lines they are force to deliver with as much comedic tone as they can milk from the script. Grady Harp

Action, Adventure, Romance, Humour all rolled into one.

[wonderfulfable · 5 August 2002]

I managed to catch the premier of Datuk Michelle Yeoh's film during its premier in Malaysia on August 1st. I can say that Datuk Yeoh has done a wonderful job, as a producer and also as the main lead in this film.

The Touch tells the tale of a relic treasure known as the Sharira which is said to contain the pure essence of a Buddhist Holy Man. To protect this great treasure, the Monks of Dun Huang hid it. When the time has come to retrieve it, the monks turned to a family of acrobats. For hundreds of years, the family trained, passing on the skills required to retrieve the Sharira when the time comes.

Yin Fei (Datuk Yeoh) and her brother Tong (Brandon Chang in his debut), are the heirs to the skills of the long lineage of acrobats. One fateful day, Eric (Ben Chaplin), a man who used to be Yin's old flame shows up with the Heart of Dun Huang, a medallion which is the key to unlocking the secret location of the Sharira. Together, they embark on a perilous journey to discover what Yin's ancestors once guarded. And what do you know, there is always the rich, merciless, unscrupulous man, Karl(Richard Roxburgh), who will stop at nothing to get his greedy hands on the prized treasure.

Pretty much your average treasure hunter movies with a little touch of Indiana Jones. There is almost a Tomb Raider reference when Karl offered Yin his resources to find the Sharira together. Fortunately, Yin just rejected his offer by kickin' his butt. By far, the scenes featured in the film were breathtaking ( China and Tibet ), thanks to director Peter Pau, who also doubles as the film's cinematographer. Action scenes were well pulled off and linked using spectacular special effects. Just don't miss the 'fight' scene between Yin and Tong in the beginning of the movie which is just reminescence of the fight between the Monkey God and Na Za.

Brandon Chang who had just made his debut in this film, may one day be the next Jet Li. It is heard that his now under Datuk Yeoh's tutelage in martial arts and Kung Fu. Datuk Yeoh, after the phenomenal success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , still manage to captivate the audiences with her acting and also her butt kickin'.

Way to go Datuk Yeoh!!

Indiana Jones, except in kung fu style

[Vartiainen · 2/10 · 8 November 2018]

The biggest problem I have with this film - aside from the amazingly bad CGI effects, and we'll get to those later - is the fact that it so obviously rips off Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. All the story beats are there, from an ancient artefact to a secret hidden temple to a final test of character to a lousy father-child relationship to a desert location. And so on, ad nauseam.

The film also has big problems trying to decide whether it wants to be a comedy or not. Some scenes are played completely straight. They're played badly, but they're played straight. But then there's Bob (Dane Cook). He's the brother of the main villain and one of his henchmen. And he's so over the top goofy that it's almost impossible to believe it was not intentional. But the rest of the film seems like it's trying to take itself seriously. Well, as seriously as a kung fu Indiana Jones rip-off can, but still.

And then there's the special effects. They have not aged well. In fact, I don't believe they ever looked good to anyone. Quite honestly I've seen better graphics in early Playstation One games. That's not a high bar to cross, but somehow this film fails to manage even that much.

I love you, Michelle Yeoh, I really do, but unfortunately this is one your movies I wish I hadn't seen.

Only Michelle Yeoh's acting stands out

[SinjinSB · 5/10 · 20 October 2002]

It seemed like this Hong Kong adventure story had potential, but never really came together. I think the script was just too lacking, despite it's similarities to one of my favorites...Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Only Michelle Yeoh's acting stands out, while the others range from mediocre to over-the-top and unbelievable. It's nicely filmed in some scenic locations and the action scenes are fun...Yeoh kicks butt! But alas, the film as a whole let me down.

** (out of 4)

Bad Computer FX NOT the Problem!!

[curtis-8 · 4/10 · 27 September 2004]

Everyone talks about how the CG is what ruined The Touch. For myself, I could have lived with the crappy CG, if only the story hadn't been messed up so horribly. The Touch has an old, very overused plot. But even given that, the filmmakers didn't even follow through on it in any logical way. I mean, even if they'd just totally copied some old 40s adventure story scene for scene and plugged in some wire-fu the film would have at least made some sense.

Here's the biggest example of what I mean:

The whole freaking premise of the story is that Michelle Yeoh and company have been trained generation after generation to be super-acrobats so that they will be THE ONLY ONES able to perform the near-impossible series of acrobatic feats necessary to get to the secret magical medallion. Right? Well, that's what you're led to believe in the first half of the film. But in the big climax of the story it turns out that ABSOLUTELY ANYONE and EVERYONE is capable of performing these feats, including the head villain and all his henchmen. Every one of them, down to the clumsiest jerk, finds it a simple task to get into the secret cave (or whatever it was). And virtually every character in the film ends up swinging and flipping around in a bad CG conflagration.

What's the freakin' point of building up this entire premise of the super acrobats and then just throwing it away at the end? The movie was full of massive logical lapses like that (similar to those in Jackie Chan's equally craptacular film of the same year "The Medallion.") .

And by the way, when I first saw this a few years ago, I thought that henchman "Bob" was head and shoulders better than anyone else in the film. Now I find out that he was played by rising standup comedy superstar Dane Cook! Go figure!

Waste of time!

[Yazizam · 1/10 · 9 April 2003]

I can say it all in one sentence: "one of the worst movies EVER!" I can not believe Michelle Yeoh agreed to play in this movie! I was waiting for something big to happen at the end, but the more it got closer to ending credits, the more I realized how I wasted my time on this movie.

Do you believe? Its hard to.

[Karfoo · 2/10 · 3 August 2002]

After all the hype about its beautiful scenery and background, it was with much anticipation that I went into the theater for this film. Was I ever disappointed.

I will give credit to Peter Pau's artistic sense, and some of the locations chosen for the film were breathtaking. But the good things I have to say about the film ends here. And, in view of this, the film may well serve better as a plug for the Tibetan travel industry than as a proper film.

=== Spoilers ahead ==> Where shall I begin? The plot was ludicrously childish. Not to say that Yeoh and Pau pilferred material from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the entire affair watched like a bastardized version of Indiana Jane, in search for the holy sharrira, with neither the gripping pace nor sense of fun and adventure. The film failed in attempting to be all things all at once. It was neither sufficiently fast paced to be a good swashbuckling adventure, nor slow enough to make the contrived romantic interlude convincing. The plot inconsistencies, some of which plain deny common sense, well, let's not even go there.

There was no characterization to speak of, and the film-maker seemed to think that they can get by simply by conjuring up all the stereotypes they can muster: the Chinese martial arts fighter; the faithful, religious and sagely father/monk, the one-dimensional bad guy (yes, one-dimensional), the obligatory meat heads as henchmen, the annoying comic relief. All of which add up to a garbled cast and a sense of misdirection, and the film never was able to form its own distinct identity. What annoyed me even more was that the producers seemed to think that selling the sense of the stereotypical "mysterious China" would be sufficient, probably thinking that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" succeeded solely on this (which it did not since Crouching Tiger was a good film based on a good, albeit decade-old, plot and strong characters).

The plot is again a jumbled mix fast and slow sequences, action sequences and supposedly character development scenes juxtaposed, which served only to destroy any pace the film could possible have established. The good guys were simply good, and the bad guys were simply bad, in a very comic book simple sort of way. The audience is, as asked of the leading characters in the film, "believe", since the actors themselves certainly failed to deliver any sense of goodness or badness. Which is completely sad since Yeoh, Chaplin, and Roxburgh are capable of being so much more, as they have shown in other films, and are victims of a daft directing and an even worse story.

I have seen a Yeoh interview in which she stated that The Touch was her way of trying to make a Chinese film for a worldwide audience, in the way that Hollywood makes films for that audience. But what I saw was the juvenile plot and characters that have so plagued Hong Kong films and, IMO, caused their demise. What Yeoh should realize, as any movie-watcher today must realize, is that a film should at the very least have a decent plot and believable characters, or else all the exotic location shoots in the world can not salvage what I have no doubt will be a tanker.

Wonderful film

[marcysfriend · 10/10 · 22 October 2010]

I do not have any idea why so many people posted adverse reviews of this movie. In any movie that has martial arts in it you have to let your self be carried into the theme. The same can be said for many other types of movies as well.

The Touch is a beautiful movie. Everything about it's imagery brings back a feeling of days gone by when big Hollywood pictures made their audience gasp at the beauty or the vastness for just a few examples.

This has special effects that look great. The story is interesting instead of just an excuse for martial arts to happen. We thought the idea and the way it was portrayed was wonderful and commanding. You can get lost in watching this movie as you care more and more about the characters and the problems they must handle. Dane Cook is even in there for a little extra humor to even things out, and does a very good job.

The story for it's type is believable and the people populating it deal with real life as well as the mystical world. One reviewer said that the love interest was a thief and was put off by that.

People sometimes change and learn and bond during rites of movie passage. Sometimes in real life the same thing can happen on a smaller scale.

I have never written a review before but I found myself needing to take up for this beautiful movie. I love it. My husband loves it. My only problem is that we rented it and the second disk is not included, so we are missing some of the specials. Perhaps even a commentary that is all in English, because the disk we have has one that is in a mixture of languages that is hard to follow.

This is a lovely film. In scope, in imagery, in story and in the of acting that brings forth that story. It is a film to cherish and watch many times.

Disappointing, but not surprisingly so

[shockers · 3/10 · 3 August 2002]

Seeing the commercial for this movie, you know you'll be disappointed with the special effects. If you've never seen an Indiana Jones movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Seven Years In Tibet, nor any other HK flick, then MAYBE this movie will entertain you. Actually, comparing this to Indiana Jones, Crouching Tiger and Seven Years in Tibet would be insults to those movies. More appropriate would be Relic Hunter, Legend Of Zu, and The Golden Child. The storyline starts out decent enough, but right off the bat you'll see some hokey f/x. For the first half of the movie, the plot unfolds like many Jackie Chan-away-from-HK flix: reluctant hero, naive sibling, overly-evil Caucasian. The next paint-by-numbers HK-flik characteristic: the ol' you-wanna-pull-your-hair-out "why did he do that stupid thing" thing. That leads to the "action" part of the movie and off they go to China ... beautiful scenery a la Crouching Tiger interspersed with Relic Hunter antics. But then the almost-entertaining movie (for a HK flik) just got taken over by people who received new computers for Christmas: it became 98% computer graphics overlayed with the actors swinging on ropes. You'd expect the cheesy latest-tech graphics in Hercules or Xena because they're spoofs, but this $$$ movie ended up like Legend of Zu ... graphics fluff. Oh, the scenes at the end in Tibet? Nice travelogue. Conclusion? (Do you need to ask?) This ain't no Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2 the Western audience is looking for.

Doesn't cut it, even with Michelle Yeoh

[richgei · 1 August 2003]

As a huge fan of Michelle Yeoh, I was waiting with baited breath to see a beautifully photographed movie with her as the star. An English language movie that was supposed to have world-wide appeal, proof to everyone that she had the true star power she already had for me and many others. While the photography was gorgeous and her strength in the lead role was obvious, the story was weak. Worse yet, the action scenes seemed too slow and "choreographed-looking." The attempts at humor were not only poor, but got really annoying. Worst of all, Michelle played the role of a wonderfully dynamic, good-hearted, woman who still loves a heel, a former love and father of their son. Ben Chaplin does a good job of playing the role of a self-centered, unreliable, untrustworthy crook with absolutely no redeeming value. I know in real life lots of women love the worst men, so there's no escapism here. But this movie makes it look like its cool to be a jerk, making it all the harder to watch. I bought the DVD for my Michelle collection. How many times I'll be able to watch it, I don't know.

Bloated fantasy

[jhs39 · 4/10 · 14 November 2002]

Expensive looking but bloated and dull martial arts fantasy. Film was shot in English with Anglo villains and an Anglo lead, obviously with a hope towards international success. Unfortunately after a strong start the film has a very saggy middle, turning into a second rate Raiders of the Lost Ark wannabe. Many of the fight scenes and effects are also far too digitized, making the film look about as real as a video game. A huge waste of talent and time.