Zhang Ziyi new spy picture

'Flying Daggers': A dream brought to life
By Claudia Puig, USA OTDAY
House of Flying Daggers is an orgy of spellbinding visuals: dazzling acrobatics, mesmerizing martial arts, sumptuous settings and resplendent costumes. With its high drama and historical setting, it is more like an opera than a movie.
Intrigue in China: Takeshi Kaneshiro is a government agent who uses a blind courtesan, Ziyi Zhang.
Sony Pictures

The film takes place in ninth-century China during the waning days of the corrupt Tang Dynasty. Mei, a lovely, blind courtesan (Ziyi Zhang), early on is revealed to be a spy for the most powerful rebel underground army, a group called the House of Flying Daggers. Two agents of the Tang government (Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) hatch a plot to use Mei to lead them to the location of the mysterious group and its leader. A perilous journey follows.

A grove of bamboo trees is a favorite setting in martial arts films, but Daggers director Zhang Yimou has made that tradition his own. At one point, Mei is alone in the woods when a band of villains attacks her from the swaying treetops. She fights valiantly but is ultimately saved by the Flying Daggers revolutionaries.
About the movie

House of Flying Daggers
* * ^ (out of four)
Stars: Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau
Directors: Zhang Yimou
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Rated: PG-13 for sequences of stylized martial arts violence and some sexuality.
Opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles

Ziyi, who played the strong-willed and courageous young warrior in the unforgettable Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has an even more powerful and luminous presence. She performs a bewitching and elaborate dance that gives way to masterful swordfighting.

House of Flying Daggers is both a love story and an action epic. Mei and Jin (Takeshi) fall in love during their three-day journey, but nothing is simple about their romance. Though there is an underlying sense of impending doom in Zhang's film, audiences will go along willingly for the breathtaking ride. This martial arts extravaganza is suffused with a painterly production design and seasonal touches, such as a field of wildflowers and vivid autumn foliage, which contribute to its magical aura.

Though the ending feels too drawn-out and melodramatic, taking away from the near-perfection of what preceded, House of Flying Daggers is the rare film that inspires audiences to suspend a sense of reality and allow themselves to be transported, as if under a spell, to an alternate, fantastic world.