I can remember watching this film for the first time when I was around ten years old. I can remember sitting down with a friend, having absolutely no interest in viewing the film, and realizing, very early on, that I was going to love this film. While I can’t say that the allure of the fantastical fights was the same at twenty-eight years old, I can say that I still very much enjoyed them. The use of the cameras throughout these fight scenes was phenomenal. The angles used were perfect in helping to build on the ideas of fantasy, as characters were able to fly, run on water and climb walls with great ease. Furthermore, it is incredible that every one of the actors performed their stunts, in entirety, throughout the film. I can say that the fact that the film is English-dubbed, rather than either in English or in Mandarin with subtitles bothers me a bit. I thought that with the film being English-dubbed it was hard to properly judge the acting of each of the members of the cast. Half of acting is the the way one sounds and with the actors voices being swapped with other, more American and English sounding, voice actors, I felt that I couldn’t possibly judge them appropriately. Based simply on facial expressions and body language I thought that each of the actors did a phenomenal job. I truly did appreciate Jiao Long’s story of transitioning herself from a struggling young woman to a woman who created her own power and her own ability to control how her life plays out. What I found incredibly strange about her story was that when Chen Chang’s Luo Xiao Hu returns to visit her, the flashback containing the two of them lasts literally thirty minutes. Typically flashbacks last no more than a few minutes at the most and I felt that veering from the main storyline for so long actually hindered the film as a whole. To separate the audience from what they’ve bought into for almost an hour at this point to visit something else for a significant amount of time almost draws them away from what is taking place in the present. Even with this hiccup in the film, I can say that I still enjoy this film, albeit not as much as when I was ten. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190332/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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