House of Flying Daggers (2004)

Never has a movie needed Christopher Doyle more. The cinematography here is certainly garden-variety pretty, but it's nowhere near the ravishing wonder of Doyle's work on Hero (or practically anything else he's ever done). And boy, does this movie lean heavily on its eye candy. Not that I blame it -- anything that keeps us from paying too much attention to the lame melodrama that comprises the screenplay is a blessing. The film makes the mistake of peaking early, with an awesome duet for pebbles and drums as played by Andy Lau and Ziyi Zhang. The fight scenes that follow, while still cool, can't quite live up to the opening gambit. And then there's the last twenty minutes, which drag the whole enterprise down into near-mediocrity. Still worth seeing, of course, but it's no masterpiece.

Grade: B-