Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger (2002) (V)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Allen Hai-Han Lan

Release Date:

2002 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Action

Plot Keywords:

Martial Arts | Revenge

Cast

Sammo Hung Kam-Bo	...	Lu Zheng Yang
Pei-pei Cheng	...	Liu Ru Yan
Siu-Wong Fan	...	Bai Xiao Hu
Jade Leung	...	Liu Yun Long
Eugenia Yuan	...	Xiao Xia

Also Known As:

Dragon Soaring, Tiger Leaping (Hong Kong: English title) (literal title)
Long teng hu yue (Hong Kong: Mandarin title)
Lung tung fu yuek (Hong Kong: Cantonese title)

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Malaysia:18SG | Singapore:PG (video premiere)

Company:

Golden Sun Films

Movie Connections:

References Wo hu cang long (2000)

A movie that came out too late for anybody to care about

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

FLYING DRAGON, LEAPING TIGER is generally thought of as an attempt to capitalize on the fad that CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON started around the year 2000. It's really not, instead it is an attempt to revive the flying swordsman movies of the early nineties. Movie like this one, DRAGON INN and the like, had gone out of fashion years earlier, and if this movie capitalized in any way on CTHD's success, it was in the casting of Cheng Pei-Pei, who made her come back in Ang Lee's wuxia fantasy. Truth be told though, this production had quite a bit of trouble, having been delayed, had the U.S. distribution rights bought and subsequently shelved, not to mention the debilitating movie piracy rampant through most of Asia, and the general disdain for this sort of genre movie, FLYING DRAGON, LEAPING TIGER faced quite an up hill slope. I was personally hoping to really enjoy the movie, after all it had Cheng Pei-Pei and Sammo Hung! Could it really be anything but good? Apparently the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

Really, this movie is about as bad as it's track record makes it sound. The plot is overtly convoluted and the script is filled with completely unnatural sounding conversation. It's not unnatural in that romantic, pretend chivalrous way, it's just silly and completely unbelievable. The story is difficult to follow, not impossible, but no viewer should have to use a flow chart in order to keep up with all the double crosses in the family history of the main characters. With the complete lack of decent plot and dialogue, the hope would be for interesting characters, but these too are mostly boring cliché's, the type which infested wuxia movies from the late sixties till the early nineties, and now pop up in sub-par vehicles like HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, and this movie right here. Motivations are shallow, depth is non existent, and most of the characters are ridiculously hot-headed and rush into conflict in the stupidest ways possible. Again, this could be a sort of violent romance (in the classical sense), but the insane melodrama and overbearing cliché keep it from being entertaining. Besides that, the movie takes itself way too seriously, so the few attempts at humor fall so flat that it's almost embarrassing. Those older movie like DUEL TO THE DEATH and SWORDSMAN were often done with a wink and a smile to let the viewer know that what they were watching was nothing more than silly fantasy, while CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and HERO played everything straight with more down to earth drama with great emotion that contrasted with the unbelievable flying and kung fu fighting sequences. FLYING DRAGON, LEAPING TIGER does it's best to combine both, and is very unsuccessful.

The fight scenes are surprisingly ground friendly. Most of them do contain some pretty outrageous wire moves, but for the most part they stay on the ground and do some acrobatics and standard sword fighting. The more impressive moments are showcases for the actors Fan Siu-Wong and Sammo Hung to show off their abilities. Fan gets some fantastic looking wushu sparring sets against multiple opponents, handling twin swords with a tremendous amount of agility and flair. Sammo also proves that he's got some great moves still in him. It's very impressive to see him move the way he does, at his age and weight. For the most part though, there is only one point that really stands out, which is a scene of Cheng Pei-Pei and an enemy flying across a cliff swinging their swords like crazy. It's one of the better moments in the action and definitely the best wire effect in the movie.

The action, as well as the movie, was directed by Allen Lan, who is a first time director and action choreographer. He's surprisingly competent, but his direction is pretty much standard and unimaginative. His use of out door locales is decent, but often times they look horribly barren. I don't mean barren in the way a desert looks barren, I mean that they look like nothing is there and it was a cheap place to film people hitting each other with swords. His cinematographers, Yam Shiu-ming, Mok Chak-yan, and Fan Tsuen-kam, do practically nothing to make any of it look interesting. The only things that look especially interesting are some desert hills and sand dunes, basically things that would take a great deal of effort to make uninteresting. But the most unforgivable aspect of the visuals is the influx of CGI. The CG work is awful, often not meshing well with the background, or even being distracting. The worst is when a stone pillar crumbles, and the different CGI models for each of the pieces seem to multiply as more of them fall. It's truly terrible to look at.

Perhaps my expectations were too high. In the movie's defense, it is great to see Cheng Pei-Pei and Sammo Hung in a movie together. Both of them are very talented actors, as is Eugenia Yuan, Cheng's daughter who has a supporting role in the film. She's poised to become well known with a recent bit part in THE GREAT RAID, and hopefully that will help to leave an impression on international movie producers. The synthesizer score is pretty bad, but then again, the movie is not so great either. Hopefully this won't be the last time that Allen Lam tries his hand at this genre, because even though it didn't meet my expectations, at least somebody still tried. And trying to make good, non-art-house styled wuxia movies is threatening to become a thing of the past.