CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

83 Alexandra
80 Band's Visit, The
76 Beauty in Trouble
47 Bella
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59 Blind Mountain
55 Bra Boys
60 Brick Lane
70 Caramel
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
83 Chop Shop
83 Chris & Don. A Love Story
78 Counterfeiters, The
52 Diminished Capacity
64 Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
84 Edge of Heaven, The
52 Elsa & Fred
79 Encounters at the End of the World
62 Expired
64 Fall, The
51 Finding Amanda
57 Flawless
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63 Foot Fist Way, The
60 Fugitive Pieces
45 Full Grown Men
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69 Go-Getter, The
74 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63 Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68 Heartbeat Detector
34 Holding Trevor
68 Honeydripper
55 Irina Palm
69 Jellyfish
60 Jihad for Love, A
68 Kabluey
62 Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82 Last Mistress, The
38 Life Before Her Eyes, The
70 Love Songs
64 Married Life
30 Meet Bill
33 Miss Conception
53 Mister Lonely
74 Mongol
52 Mother of Tears, The
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
84 My Winnipeg
61 On the Rumba River
69 Operation Filmmaker
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
72 Priceless
51 Promotion, The
55 Quid Pro Quo
29 Red Roses and Petrol
79 Reprise
71 Roman de gare
xx Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
56 Sangre de mi sangre
51 Savage Grace
76 Shotgun Stories
66 Son of Rambow
70 Standard Operating Procedure
62 Stuck
72 Surfwise
81 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
xx Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71 To the Limit
54 Tracey Fragments, The
70 Trumbo
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
56 Unknown Woman
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
62 Wackness, The
37 War, Inc.
64 Water Lilies
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
55 Without the King
72 Woman on the Beach
64 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

House of Flying Daggers
Sony Pictures Classics

House of Flying Daggers reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 89 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.6 out of 10
based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 135 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sequences of stylized martial arts violence, and some sexuality

Starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, Ziyi Zhang, and Dandan Song

The year is 859 AD, and China's once flourishing Tang Dynasty is in decline. Unrest is raging throughout the land, and the corrupt government is locked in battle with rebel armies that are forming in protest. The largest and most prestigious of these rebel groups is the House of Flying Daggers, which is growing ever more powerful under a mysterious new leader. (Sony Pictures Classics)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Drama  |  Foreign  |  Romance  
WRITTEN BY: Feng Li
Bin Wang
Yimou Zhang
 
DIRECTED BY: Yimou Zhang  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: April 19, 2005 
Video: April 19, 2005 
Theatrical: December 3, 2004 
RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: China / Hong Kong 
LANGUAGE(S): Mandarin (with English subtitles) 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Film Threat Phil Hall
Quite simply, House of Flying Daggers is a film that sets several new standards for production and entertainment values. It is a wild riot of color, music, passion, action, mystery, pure old-fashioned thrills and even dancing.
Read Full Review
100
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It's great, fantastical fun.
Read Full Review
100
Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
House of Flying Daggers finds the great Chinese director at his most romantic in this thrilling martial arts epic that involves a conflict between love and duty carried out to its fullest expression.
Read Full Review
100
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
An astonishing combination of spectacle, suspense, martial-arts flash, sublime silliness, anti-gravity action and passionate intensity -- before and after everything else, it's a grand love story.
100
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
The most gorgeous movie of the year. This smashing martial-arts romance from Chinese director Zhang Yimou is stunning in other ways, too, like the eroticism that ripples just beneath the surface.
Read Full Review
100
New York Post Lou Lumenick
The movie equivalent of a 12-course feast crammed with unforgettable images and mind-boggling stunts.
Read Full Review
100
Time Richard Corliss
The cast list is like a convocation of the Three Chinas: Taiwan's Kaneshiro, Hong Kong's Lau and the mainland's Zhang Ziyi. All are terrific, but the lady shines brightest.
Read Full Review
100
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's as thrilling and lushly beautiful a movie as has been released all year, matched only by Zhang's epic "Hero." And I think this film is the more powerful.
Read Full Review
100
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Chinese director Zhang Yimou understands perfectly that the small can be epic and awe-inspiring. And, by the way, he knows how to get big, too.
Read Full Review
100
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Zhang weaves in both thrilling martial-arts set pieces and stunning studies of period silk tapestry and costume.
Read Full Review
100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Forget about the plot, the characters, the intrigue, which are all splendid in House of Flying Daggers, and focus just on the visuals.
Read Full Review
100
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The sheer joy of letting go as a tale overwhelms your senses and drives the known world away -- that's the story.
Read Full Review
100
Slate David Edelstein
This is the most intoxicatingly beautiful martial arts picture I've ever seen.
Read Full Review
100
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
It's action opera, sword-and-sorcery song-and-dance, and it's a heart-pumping, jaw-dropping thrill. OK, so I kind of like the thing.
Read Full Review
100
Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Its exquisiteness can overwhelm in a single sitting.
Read Full Review
100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
By turns breathtaking and heartbreaking.
Read Full Review
100
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
He's (Yimou) like a painter combining bloody reds, sunshine yellows and pale blues in the harmony of a masterpiece.
Read Full Review
91
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
An outrageously gorgeous spectacle of balletic aggression. At the same time, it offers something we rarely encounter in a whirling martial-arts extravaganza: a romantic passion that's woven into the very fabric of the action.
Read Full Review
90
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
A glorious new addition to martial-arts cinema.
Read Full Review
89
Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
I don't know if the many plot swerves withstand a second viewing, but I suspect the meat of the matter – the swooning visuals, the expert choreography, the teasing love story – does.
Read Full Review
88
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The result is one of the most visually astonishing martial-arts fantasies ever made.
Read Full Review
88
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Forget "Hero" -- that cult hit was just Zhang Yimou's warm-up for this martial-arts fireball that throws in a lyrical love story, head-spinning fights and dazzling surprises.
Read Full Review
83
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The second action melodrama released in the United States this year by director Zhang Yimou, and if I prefer the previous one, "Hero," it's partly a matter of degrees.
Read Full Review
80
Variety Derek Elley
The tangled tale of love and disguise is awesome in its action sequences but doesn't touch the heart to the same degree.
Read Full Review
80
LA Weekly David Chute
The most seamless piece of sensuous expressionism Zhang has created since "Ju Dou" (1990).
Read Full Review
80
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
You feel wiped and blinded by such ravishment, yet a voice within you asks: Come on, guys, can't you just stop for the holidays?
Read Full Review
80
The New York Times Dana Stevens
A gorgeous entertainment, a feast of blood, passion and silk brocade. But though the picture is full of swirling, ecstatic motion, it is not especially moving.
Read Full Review
80
Empire Dan Jolin
This is how action movies should be made.
Read Full Review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Actors Zhang Ziyi and Takeshi Kaneshiro are the kind of startlingly good-looking, glamorous stars that evoke classic Hollywood adventure films.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Ty Burr
It's a perfect example of how far production design and editing WON'T take you when the story's not there.
Read Full Review
75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
If you think "Hero" is a sumptuous film, prepare to be blown away by House of Flying Daggers.
Read Full Review
75
Premiere Glenn Kenny
All told, while the goods that Daggers offers are choice, the movie ultimately demonstrates that too much can be, well, more than enough.
Read Full Review
70
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Choreographed to the last beat, the action scenes have a depth that the film's thinly sketched characters never quite develop.
Read Full Review
70
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
If only this epic had enough substantial melodramatic hooks to hang this woman's beauty on; emotional traction is most often buried under acres of carefully coordinated vistas and CGI-hued flora.
Read Full Review
70
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
This film pivots on a romantic triangle as overwrought as it is stylized. It's like a Douglas Sirk melodrama ratcheted up with fists of fury and wrapped in apparently endless yards of shimmering silk.
Read Full Review
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's exuberant, exhilarating, poetic and -- intentionally and not -- rather silly.
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer
Beautiful but hollow.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 135 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Denise G. gave it a10:
a beautiful film with jaw dropping action & achingly tender love scenes. The scenery is stunning.

Reikon gave it a10:
Best of his genre.

J B gave it a9:
It's a good story with great acting, that actually does the reverse of what most stories do: it starts out on a grand scale (rebels vs. government) and then focuses inward on a smaller scale (character devotions vs. personal responsibility). Luckily for us, HoFD is one of very few films that does this well. I would rate this higher than Hero.

Pat C. gave it an8:
The film starts as a political confrontation between government and rebel interests, but no one is who they seem, and through many plot twists the story converts into a romantic confrontation between love and freedom interests. A Mata Hari kind of thing. But unlike a Hollywood romance, the characters all realize they are expendable, that no one cares whether they live or die. In the confines of this oriental mindset they find a way to make their obscurity empowering, which is interesting though perhaps not memorable. The martial arts action is precise but reeks of improbability. The most remarkable thing by far in this project is its attention to the art of the photoplay. Every scene is lush in color and light and finely crafted with the meticulousness of an impressionistic painting. As a feast of visual splendor for those with an eye for art, this is a wonderful movie.

groundfisher gave it a5:
Incredibly over-rated. This is a silly movie. About two-thirds of the way through the film the plot is forgotten - and major aspects remain unexplained and unresolved - in favour of a love-story. Because it's merely a love story, the martial arts scenes lose all meaning and relevance - even the last scene. And the ending is nothing but preposterous. Sure, there are moments of visual beauty, but so what. What's the point of tacking on a somewhat adolescent melodrama? It started well enough, but by the end my companion summed it up using only four letters.

Gaz gave it a9:
Simply beautiful. A love story that breaks the stereotypical dimensions of the mainstream Western cinema, and in doing so, expresses that romance on a far greater and physical level. Far better than other easily predictable romances, it thereby deserves a higher mark.

Gnarles gave it a7:
The first 90 minutes or so are simply great, but the climax eventually becomes almost unbearably silly - and the alarmingly fake CGI snowstorm doesn't help. Until that point, though, this is a beautiful and satisfyingly passionate movie, with some of the best fight scenes ever shot (especially the bamboo forest). Recommended, but don't be surprised if you find yourself laughing at the end.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: World News | Fantasy Football | Amy Winehouse | Baseball | E3 | Batman | Firefox 3 | iPhone 3G

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use