Not a masterpiece like the first, but a solid movie. It lacks the magic elegance of Ang Lee's film, but, although the original language is English, it feels somehow more authentically Chinese.
In a world were evil is real and eternal, an unavoidable aspect of human destiny, the baddies are more than caricatures, tragic figures themselves. I may add that I have a feeble for Asian "femmes fatales", so that the duo Blind Enchantress (Eugenia Yuan) and Mantis (Veronica Ngo) proved irresistible.
Add to that a couple of technically memorable fight scenes, some good jokes and the movie, despite its recurrent clumsiness, raises unmistakably above mediocrity.
In a world were evil is real and eternal, an unavoidable aspect of human destiny, the baddies are more than caricatures, tragic figures themselves. I may add that I have a feeble for Asian "femmes fatales", so that the duo Blind Enchantress (Eugenia Yuan) and Mantis (Veronica Ngo) proved irresistible.
Add to that a couple of technically memorable fight scenes, some good jokes and the movie, despite its recurrent clumsiness, raises unmistakably above mediocrity.