Metacritic reviews

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.

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.

A glorious new addition to martial-arts cinema.

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.

The tangled tale of love and disguise is awesome in its action sequences but doesn't touch the heart to the same degree.

The most seamless piece of sensuous expressionism Zhang has created since "Ju Dou" (1990).

If you think "Hero" is a sumptuous film, prepare to be blown away by House of Flying Daggers.

All told, while the goods that Daggers offers are choice, the movie ultimately demonstrates that too much can be, well, more than enough.

Choreographed to the last beat, the action scenes have a depth that the film's thinly sketched characters never quite develop.

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.