Crappy film

Charming and brutal

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This sequel is quite awful to be honest. I'm a fan of kung-fu movies and this is by far the worst I've seen. Bride with White Hair 1 was actually quite good and this is a huge disappointment. BWWH 1 was brilliant in some ways with an unique odd-ball evil bad guy.The couple from the first movie played a small role in this movie. Instead the movie revolves around a bunch of uninteresting characters trying to seek revenge on their fallen clans. But there's no antagonist in this movie so the revenge is mute.The worst part to this movie is the kung-fu or lack there of. They literally had a street style knife fight. The character at the end refused to fight because there was lack of choreography.

I think this film would have got better reviews if it had been called something else. The problem is Ronny Yu made a great, almost perfect film with the original Bride and this has rather a rushed feel to it. The epic, mythological feel of the first film has been replaced by something else and Brigitte Lin has no real space to develop the tragic character until right at the end when she is reunited with Leslie Cheung in a not exactly happy ending, if perhaps fitting. But the photography is wonderful and Sunny Chan is, in my opinion, a better actor than some give credit for. Joey Man does what she is there for and provides the eye candy and some nudity. They are supported by the great Helena Law Lan and Christy Chung plays it for fun and dies a suitably tragic death. This is much bloodier than the first film and the feminist, even lesbian overtones are too obvious at times. The kung fu and sword play is minimal but I sat through the film really enjoying it and if you don't consider it a sequel then it is still better than many other films.

This was a real let down for me. The original Bride with White Hair is a great kung fu fantasy film but this one was pretty weak. I didn't care at all for the new characters who unfortunately dominated the screen time and the story wasn't well developed. While the first film was tragic and involving this one was tedious (as I merely counted the time to the end when the ill-fated lovers would actually meet). The action was poor in this one as well. The fights were not choreographed very well and there really wasn't much kung-fu at all. Just a few weak sword fights between the highly dis-likable Lui and one of Lin's henchwomen. Lin herself mainly uses a sort of telekinesis to throw people into walls and sometimes her hair, a far cry from the impressive showing with the whip and kung-fu she displayed in the previous film. I still gave this movie a 4 because at least it was fast pace and I did want to see what was going to happen at the end, though I (as most anyone who watched the first one) predicted it would go down the way it did and after seeing it I found it anti-climactic and wished they had either made a proper sequel or just left the story alone. I really recommend the first one but as for the sequel only fans of the genre and those who really want to see Lin as the bride one more time need apply.

There's some confusion in these reviews between the first and second movies. The sequel was rushed into production to capitalise on the success of the first, so obviously there is a drop in quality. Brigitte Lin did not "retire" as such, but got married, which in Hong Kong cinema often counts as the same thing - its seen as bad form if a woman has to work because it suggests that the husband is not providing. The rest of us know that acting in movies doesn't actually count as real work, but we almost lost Maggie Cheung to this odd syndrome, and even Michelle Yeoh retired for the few years when she was married to a big name producer. Anyway, Brigitte Lin is still fine in this film (great to see a woman "of a certain age" still given such a strong part in a HK film), despite her performance being simplistically villainous throughout. And Christy Chung is fantastic in a cigarette chewing pastiche of Chow Yun Fat. The gender politics in this movie are particularly striking - the men are mostly sexist pigs trembling in the face of female empowerment, while the women inhabit a man-hating commune where they are gradually eradicating the two-timing dogs from their world ("Men. I see one, I kill one."). Both are somewhat reprehensible in their own way, but in the Asian context, it is notable that many such films indulge fantasies of powerful evil women permitting spectacular displays of forceful sexuality which is always punished or destroyed at the end to return the gender balance to its patriarchal, safe norm. As such, it fits neatly into all the categories which have made Hong Kong films so fascinating and extreme to Western viewers.