Like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , this is a wuxia movie with lots of implausible martial arts fighting alongside the warrior philosophy. Which it almost pulls off in great style but then ruins it at the end.

The plot revolves around two police captains who hatch a plan to use Mei (Ziyi), a blind member of the rebellion known as the House of Flying Daggers to unwittingly lead them to the rebellions leader. Unfortunately the blind woman and the captain who helped her fake escape fall in love, pursued by the other captain who is the woman’s longer-term love and also secretly a member of the Flying Daggers. And Mei isn’t really blind, but is bait for a trap. Keeping up?

Along the way there are some excellent fighting scenes including one in a bamboo forest with warriors leaping and fighting through the canopy. Once again the attention to colour and form are superb with some stunning acrobatics, but with everything setup perfectly its all spoiled with a weird ending. I lost track of how many times Mei dies, struggles back to life, dies, struggles back to life and all in a landscape that has suddenly becomes a snowfield. Strange.

This film is good fun, and with great possibilities, but fails to explore the love triangle or the double-crosses it involved, as if they ran out of screen time or money. Perhaps they did. The House of Flying Daggers refers to the rebellions main weapon, and involves boomerang tricks that would have ‘Marine Boy’ and Australian aboriginals agog.