The film by Hou Hsiao Hsien won the Best Director and Best Soundtrack awards from the Cannes Film Festival and swooped up the Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards, winning five, including those for Best Director, Best Feature Film and Best Cinematography. Moreover, the reviews from all over the world were almost exclusively dithyrambic, with the majority stressing that he invigorated the wuxia genre and characterizing it a masterpiece. Is that the case though? And how much of wuxia is “The Assassin” actually? Let us take things from the beginning though.
“The Assassin” screened at
Festival des Cinémas d’Asie de Vesoul
The story takes place in 8th century China, a time of great upheaval that resulted in the dethronement of the Tang dynasty. The central character of the story is Nie Yinniang, who was kidnapped by a nun named Jiaxin, when she was ten years old. Jiaxin trained the girl into becoming a terribly efficient assassin,...
“The Assassin” screened at
Festival des Cinémas d’Asie de Vesoul
The story takes place in 8th century China, a time of great upheaval that resulted in the dethronement of the Tang dynasty. The central character of the story is Nie Yinniang, who was kidnapped by a nun named Jiaxin, when she was ten years old. Jiaxin trained the girl into becoming a terribly efficient assassin,...
- 2/16/2020
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Hou Hsiao Hsien's 'The Assassin' Review : Does it live up to the hype?STORY70%ACTING70%DIRECTING80%VISUALS90%POSITIVESTechical prowess in all aspectsArtful directionNEGATIVESScarce action2016-01-1478%Overall ScoreReader Rating: (1 Vote)81%
The film by Hou Hsia Hsen won the Best Director and Best Soundtrack awards from the Cannes Film Festival and swooped up the Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards, winning five, including those for Best Director, Best Feature Film and Best Cinematography. Moreover, the reviews from all over the world were almost exclusively dithyrambic, with the majority stressing that he invigorated the wuxia genre and characterizing it a masterpiece. Is that the case though? And how much of wuxia is “The Assassin” actually? Let us take things from the beginning though.
The story takes place in 8th century China, a time of great upheaval that resulted in the dethronement of the Tang dynasty. The central character of the story is Nie Yinniang,...
The film by Hou Hsia Hsen won the Best Director and Best Soundtrack awards from the Cannes Film Festival and swooped up the Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards, winning five, including those for Best Director, Best Feature Film and Best Cinematography. Moreover, the reviews from all over the world were almost exclusively dithyrambic, with the majority stressing that he invigorated the wuxia genre and characterizing it a masterpiece. Is that the case though? And how much of wuxia is “The Assassin” actually? Let us take things from the beginning though.
The story takes place in 8th century China, a time of great upheaval that resulted in the dethronement of the Tang dynasty. The central character of the story is Nie Yinniang,...
- 1/14/2016
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Nie Yinniang (The Assassin)
Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Written by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Chu Tien-Wen
Taiwan 2015
There was a lot wriggling and quite a few walkouts in today’s screening of Nie Yinniang. My initial thoughts were rambling along the lines of: “Is this worse than the worst film in competition so far?”; “The writers need to take some remedial scriptwriting classes”; “Did someone bribe Cannes to get this film in?” Woe the martial arts and Asian cinema ignoramus that I am – apparently the director is a “master of the genre” and critics loved the film. Well, critics except this one.
Nie Yinniang tells the story of Yinniang, played by Shu Qi, a taciturn black-clad female assassin (for a while I thought the character was supposed to be mute but eventually she blurted out some random phrase or two). She is under the control of a most preposterous princess Jiaxin,...
Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Written by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Chu Tien-Wen
Taiwan 2015
There was a lot wriggling and quite a few walkouts in today’s screening of Nie Yinniang. My initial thoughts were rambling along the lines of: “Is this worse than the worst film in competition so far?”; “The writers need to take some remedial scriptwriting classes”; “Did someone bribe Cannes to get this film in?” Woe the martial arts and Asian cinema ignoramus that I am – apparently the director is a “master of the genre” and critics loved the film. Well, critics except this one.
Nie Yinniang tells the story of Yinniang, played by Shu Qi, a taciturn black-clad female assassin (for a while I thought the character was supposed to be mute but eventually she blurted out some random phrase or two). She is under the control of a most preposterous princess Jiaxin,...
- 5/22/2015
- by Zornitsa Staneva
- SoundOnSight
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