Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (UK)

8 / 10
18 votes cast
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A film by Ang Lee
Certificate: 12
Running Time: 115 mins
Retail Price: £19.99
Release Date:

Synopsis:
The disappearance of a magical jade sword spurs a breathtaking quest for the missing treasure. Li (Chow Yun-Fat) is embittered by the loss of his jade sword, and his unrequited pursuit of Yu (Michelle Yeoh) is further complicated by the mysterious intrusion of an assassin. The identity of the assassin is gradually unveiled as another poignant tale of love begins to ravel with that of Li and Yu against the backdrop of Western China`s magnificent landscape.

Fight Choreography by Yuen Wo-Ping

Special Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Two Trailers
Two Featurettes
Commentary
Photo Gallery
Filmographies

Video Tracks:
Widescreen Anamorphic 2.35:1

Audio Tracks:
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1 Mandarin

Subtitle Tracks:
Polish
Czech
Turkish
English
Portuguese
Hungarian

Directed By:
Ang Lee

Written By:




Starring:
Pei-pei Cheng
Sihung Lung
Chen Chang
Ziyi Zhang
Michelle Yeoh
Yun-Fat Chow

Soundtrack By:
Tan Dun

Director of Photography:
Peter Pau

Editor:
Tim Squyres

Costume Designer:
Timmy Yip

Production Designer:
Timmy Yip

Producer:
Quangang Zheng
Sum Shia Wai
Er-Dong Liu
Phillip Lee
Ang Lee
William Kong
Li-Kong Hsu
Ping Dong
Po Chu Chui

Executive Producer:
James Schamus
David Linde

Distributor:
Columbia Pictures

Your Opinions and Comments

10 / 10
S U P E R B , in every way!
I WILL watch it again, and again!

Stunning Fight scenes, a lovely tale and a well directed film.
Quality!

There is nothing more I can say, just go and BUY IT!
posted by Andy Milner on 11/6/2001 04:41
10 / 10
This is a great movie with fight scenes and a excellent story. This film is worth the wait as I didn`t see it at the cinema. You can tell why it won four oscars with excellent cinematography and excellent music score with haunting cello solos.The video is clear and crisp and the sound is great as well. Well worth being in my dvd collection.
posted by David Garner on 20/6/2001 17:15
6 / 10
Good grief. What was all the fuss about. Look, I can fly. The `wire work` has got to be the silliest ever. Fighting in the tree-tops, ridiculous. Made even more difficult to follow by having two significant male characters who look almost identical.

Have a good siesta, or don`t buy this.
posted by scrot on 23/6/2001 00:43
9 / 10
Film

One of the best films ive ever seen, deserves all its hype, praise and success.

Video

Bitrate: 9.80 Mbps

Ive read some reviews of this DVDs picture quality and people have mentioned how there is this so called `edge enhancement` problem and lots of dust/speckles in the film what utter CRAP! This is without doubt, the most vibrant, colourful, pin-sharp, crystal clear DVD transfer ive ever seen, its AT LEAST as good as Gladiators picture.

This speckles/dust thing was way over exageratted in the main reviews around the net, there are maybe 2 or 3 tiny white speckles that appear throughout the running of the entire film, and even then you would almost have to get the magnifying glass out to see them! How someone could get upset and mark down the quality of this transfer because of one single pixel in a frame being incorrect is just plain sillyness. If the picture on this DVD wasnt so insanely pixel sharp, you probably wouldnt even see them at all, pause this film at any moment and your almost guaranteed to be looking at a still of a quality that matches a high quality, hig res JPEG image, with NO artefacts whatsoever. This DVD does the film and the DVD format proud. Incredible job.

Audio

Bitrate : 384.00 Kbps

Tiny bit of hiss at times, otherwise great. Very sharp, moderate bass. Fantastic soundtrack, suits the film perfectly.

Features

Behind the scenes making of featurette is quite good, 20 mins. Interview with Michelle Yeoh isnt bad either, 14 mins.

Great main menu, but jumping between menus is terrible. When other people on other reviews mentioned how it showed you vital clips of the film during menu switching, they wernt lying, this is a terrible design! Its a shame cos the actual menu backgrounds are great, scenes from various parts of the film, such as a water pool that continually animates with flowing water etc..

Overall

Amazing film on an equally amazing DVD, coudlnt have been much better really.

BAM.
posted by BAM on 23/6/2001 02:08
9 / 10
Amazing! This is has to be one of the finest movies I have ever scene with some really good well staged action sequences that blow the matrix right out of the water.
Picture quality is fine and there are a good number of extras which aren`t all that interesting. The commentary appears to be one of the better ones around, although I haven`t heard much of it.
The storyline is, well not great but good enough to make you forget how silly it is. Very original in it`s style, you don`t see many made in the fantasy genre these days but with Lord of the Rings on the way there may be a revival...
I should be mentioned that the english dubbing is pretty poor, stick to subtitles.
Great film, good disk.
posted by groovedoctor on 24/6/2001 00:19
8 / 10
A really good martial arts film and love piece. I was worried before I bought this film that I might not enjoy it but I did. The fight stunts were amazing as of the music which backed them up. The extras are worth watching as well apparently more than the R1 release in America heeee. To watch it in mandarin is best as the dubbing in english is out of pace with the original version.
posted by D.stent on 26/6/2001 16:33
2 / 10
I had`nt bought a DVD for months as I could`nt see anything worth buying so I bought this movie in Region 2, my first ever, all other DVD`S are Region 1. The picture quality is poor the story is pathetic, the fight scenes are a joke. What a waist of money, by the way its for sale on QXL if you want this worthless piece of ***t.
posted by Dangerous on 30/6/2001 18:03
8 / 10
Oh yeeaaahhh! What a great film - action, story, stunts - what more could you want?

Some extras, OK, behind the scenes, interviews, trailers - enough to keep to interested.

Get it now!
posted by mclh on 20/8/2001 18:20
10 / 10
Amazing movie!
It is what waching a movie is about. Scenes are beautifully framed and the reserved acting gives gravitas too.
The fight scenes action packed in the given style and are also comic.
Its films like this that make me glad I`ve got eyes!
The musics hot to
posted by masala on 2/11/2001 20:49
5 / 10
I was told by a friend that this is an execellent film, so I bought it.

The DVD it self is not too bad, and I didn`t notice too much bad stuff. The audio is quite good, and the extras interesting.

But the film, I`m not sure how to take it, is it a "Comedy" that takes itself serious, or a serious film that wants to be a comedy?

It reminds me of "Monkey", and I thought it was rubbish. Sorry for being a philistine, but there you go.
posted by Tubs74 on 12/11/2001 10:30
9 / 10
Excellent film, nice change to the usual Martial arts films. Let your imagination run away and you won`t be disappointed.
(by the way those who suggest that the wire-work and fight scene`s are ludicrous should perhaps look into Mandarin culture a bit more, before passing ignorant judgement, besides Ang Lee explains why they did it in the extras).
posted by richard augustus on 13/11/2001 13:27
8 / 10
Content:- I really like this film. It is definately not a fast moving film, but I wouldnt say that it was boring. It seems to carry itself along very well, helped hugely by the glorious direction and set pieces, fight scenes to die for and a very emotional soundtrack. The flashback scene in the middle is very oddly played out, but thats about my only gripe with this film. The ending is fantastic.

Video:- Good colour and contrast, only really let down by the amount of dirt present in some scenes, although this is unavoidable really. As with most films though, it clears up towards the rest of the film.

Audio:- A very subtle soundtrack with minimal use of the surrounds as action speakers, but plenty of ambience. The music sounds very good and there is enough bass. No problem at all.

Features:- A reasonable show here but I think there definately could have been a few more things added, what with all the hype that followed this film. Nevermind. Nice menus though.

Overall:- A fine version of the film with good audio, video and features, although they could all be better, especially the video bit. Yep.
posted by Blazingmonga on 11/12/2001 22:30
7 / 10
A fine movie and great piece of cinema. It is over-rated too much because this is not a flawless piece of work and Hong Kong cinema has much more to offer. In 19th Century China, The green destiny sword is stolen by a witch, who also has naive young Zhang Ziyi by her side and Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh are trying to get it back. Some of the fight scenes are good but could have been much better. The flying from place to place may be artistic but it just looks plain ridiculous and stupid. Aside from that, the sets are well done and the plot is quite good and interesting.

I dont know if there are 2 different region 2 versions with extras but the one I have has a lot of dirt and grain on the print that brings the quality down a lot. I expected a lot better from a new release movie on dvd. At least the sharpness is there. The sound is pretty good all round but nothing special.

There are 2 featurettes, one about the production and another is a conversation with Michelle Yeoh, Commentary, picture gallery and trailers. This is decent but pretty lousy when you consider the fact that the movie won so many oscars, critical acclaim and the fact that it was a massive success and shot on a huge budget.

The video is good but still it p*sses me off because I know that it can and should be much better being a new movie. CTHE have shown they can make it better by releasing a new Superbit version. Why didnt they do this in the first place? They want more and more money that is why. If it can be done, I dont see why they didnt release the superbit disc with another disc full of extras in one package. Leave this and get the superbit. It has no extras but picture and sound are superior
posted by dicanio on 1/5/2003 04:18