Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

A man casts a net into the calm water of a green-fringed lake. A caravan of waggons trundles over the wide-cracked, parch-skied vista of a David Leanian desert. A nimble, black-masked girl-thief backflips her way into the silent midnight quarters of a rich man's house and steals a legendary warrior's sword - the Green Destiny.

All scenes from Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, epic in its narrative sweep, panoramic in its cinematic glory. Lee has crafted a martial arts film where the action is all there; kinetic, riotously celebratory (especially an outrageous bar brawl which both parodies and pays homage to John Ford westerns), but always driven by the emotions of the characters, so much so that fights spin and whirl, pushed this way and that by the conflicting, changing emotions of the opponents.

Honourable Warrior, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) renounces the 'way of the sword', giving his own sword Green Destiny as a gift to an old friend, and entrusting female warrior, Yui Hsui Lien (Michelle Yeoh) to deliver it safely to Beijing. Once in Beijing, Yui meets Jen (Zhang Ziyi), a wealthy girl unhappy about her forthcoming arranged marriage. When the Green Destiny is stolen, Yui suspects Jen, but is reluctant to expose her, instead determining to deal with the incident in her own way. Jen, however, proves to be a young woman of formidable abilities, and so the fight is on to recover Green Destiny, and bring Jen into the training discipline of the Wutan before she becomes a 'poisoned dragon' - a powerful fighter lacking a warrior's code of honour.

The fight sequences are, quite simply, stunning, especially between the two lead females, a dazzling display of wire-work, and faster than the eye moves which have the grace of a ballet, and the grim ferocity of two people who mean to kill each other, but are afraid of it too. Missing is the camp, pseudo-dyke catfight titillations o Xena or Russ Meyer (fun as they are) but strong, characterful women who are not the size of men, nor exceptions, but truly powerful.

Chow Yun Fat brings a subtle depth to his weary warrior, eyes tortured with untold regrets, and a physical power to his performance which is entirely believable. Michelle Yeoh matches him, her beauty tinged with the same sadness - their unspoken love for each other bound up with honour, and more poignant for it.

Yet it is Zhang Ziyi's film. The other characters are driven into action by Jen - she is the whirlwind of force and fire - a dragon; and it is her journey, her rites of passage that we watch, struggling with her need to be loved, to be free, to push her boundaries, the push towards and away from the surrogate mother figure (Yeoh), first love, and the taste of sweet freedom beyond that. It is exhilarating as a woman to see that initiation as something more than 'camp-fires' and singing into hairbrushes with your chums.

And the girl can kick ass.

But, if none of that appeals, then see it for the tree-top fight between Jen and Li, which takes place in a bamboo forest where the wind whistles through the leaves, and balancing on a bending branch an inch wide is difficult, but not impossible - not for a Wutan warrior.

Showing at the Broadway and the Showcase.

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