the audience applauded

Sadly Over-hyped

not as good as all the hype

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I'm very surprised by many of the reviews here. Only one mentions that this film is 'unintentionally hilarious', which is exactly how I would also describe it. I went into the cinema expecting a serious kung-fu fantasy, and ended up laughing loudly in my seat.From what I gather, the intent of the film IS to be a serious martial arts fantasy. There are many reviews praising it as such, so I will praise it as I experienced it: as a cheesy, poorly edited and questionably acted drama, complete with a slippery plot and decrepit CGI. The CGI is forgivable as that's bound to age, but other choices of scene and dialogue leave the viewer giggling or just plain confused. One memorable scene features the main female character dancing around her room in loving rapture, with handkerchiefs draped over her head. The editing does a number on the film's pace and tone, resulting in an awkward pace and cuts between scenes that are more funny than tension-building.These are all good things, because the film was very entertaining, just not for the reasons it tries for.

Beautiful scenery, and good story sums up this gem of a martial arts film.Three individuals, Lord Conquerer (Sonny Chiba), Wind (Ekin Cheng), Cloud (Aaron Kwok) gets entangled in an ambitious conquest scheme of Lord Conquerer. Later they part ways, and battle each other.High quality is evident throughout this martial art film, and even after 10 years since it was made, it's still one of the best movie of this type. Made on high budget for Hong Kong movie, production is lavish, and scenes are breathtaking. This may be the precursor to other successful high budget movie such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". You can see very young Qi Sue in the supporting role, as she's poised to be one of the A list actor of Hong Kong cinema for the next 10 years.If you haven't seen this yet, you owe it to yourself to see it. It's a beautiful movie.

What a martial arts movie! Good acting, great special effects and charismatic characters. The martial arts sequences were beautifully shot, indoors as well as out of doors.The plot is a little hazy, at least as to why Cloud would be a student under the man who killed his father; however, he has the appropriate amount of angst, so it is easily ignored. In my opinion, the Cassandra-like character, Mud-Buddha, is the most compelling. Like Cassandra, he misused his gift of prophecy; however, unlike Cassandra, he was stricken with running sores.Sonny Chiba was sufficiently intense in this movie. I've seen a great many of his movies and this is not his best performance; however, I don't think that he was meant to overpower the special effects anyway. I find it interesting that, if I hadn't known beforehand, I never would've guessed that the man on the screen behind the beard was Chiba...Anyone who liked Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon would enjoy this movie. If you like the older martial arts flicks, this one should also be a joy to watch. I give it a nine out of ten...

This was a huge hit when it went on the bigscreen around Asia, and I must say as I now have laid my hands upon the DVD version that this film is a rather nice story telling magician movie =) it uses a lot of effects which overall is very nicely done..though I have awaited a little more action but I guess we can't get it all..I must say that I wonder where they have cut out almost 30 minutes of the movie but for the US release. I got the HK version so I can't tell what they cut outI recommend this movie to everyone that enjoys HK movies and likes magic to rule an film =)