User reviews

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains one of the greatest martial arts films ever made. The breath-taking cinematography and graceful fighting sequences led it to become the highest grossing film in a foreign language in North America, helped open up the west to Asian cinema and is quite simply a masterpiece. But sadly The Sword of Destiny seems to capture very little of the beauty that made Crouching Tiger so incredible and instead feels more like an attempt to cash in on the legacy of Ang Lee's original film.

Taking place 18 years after the original film, Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) returns to defend the sword Green Destiny once again, this time from the evil Lord Hades (Jason Scott Lee). She is assisted by Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen), her ex fiancé who she believed was dead. Meanwhile a young woman known as Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) who is training under Shu Lien begins to fall for Wei Fang (Harry Shun Jr), a young thief who attempted to steal the sword for Hades. The film rehashes several story beats from the original film but recreates them with far weaker characterisation and lacks the same depth of its predecessor.

The only returning cast member from the first film is Michelle Yeoh, who does deliver a good performance by bringing the same wisdom and nobility that she bought to the first film. However every other character suffers from a screenplay that is incapable of doing anything other than filling up time until the next action sequence. The main romance in the film between the two young lovers is never able to create any real chemistry. Even Donnie Yen, one of the greatest Chinese action stars, is unable to do anything with his little screen time and the incredibly bland script other than fight and look stoic.

The cinematography mixed with the vast landscapes looks nice at times, but at others the film suffered heavily from an overuse of CGI that feels like a very misguided departure from the natural beauty of the original film. Also instead of being filmed in Mandarin like the original film, the actors instead all speak English. Obviously this is done to appeal to a wider demographic, but it ends up distancing itself even further from the tone of the original film.

Out of everyone who could direct a sequel to Crouching Tiger, Woo- Ping Yuen could at first seem like a good choice. He's directed some of the greatest action films from China (including Drunken Master and Iron Monkey) and was even the action choreographer for the original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And he is able to pull of some great fight sequences throughout the film, including one creative sequence battling along a frozen lake. But as impressive as the fight choreography is, it never recaptures the tone of the original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Whereas the fights in Crouching Tiger played out like a delicate dance through which two warriors communicated, Sword of Destiny is an impressive display of fighting skill and stunt work, but nothing much else.

Also whilst Woo-Ping Yuen is quite possibly one of the greatest action directors of all time, his style just wasn't suited here. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wasn't really an action movie. It was a romantic drama cleverly disguised as a martial arts flick. But Sword of Destiny is instead just an action movie with a weak romantic sub-plot tacked on.

Amazing action scenes and beautiful cinematography. The fights are choreographed beautifully and even had the added benefit of a little cinema magic to get the superhuman agility of the samurai. The plot was easy to follow and I didn't feel like it relied to heavily on the first crouching tiger so that you could follow along even without having seen it. Enjoyed watching.

Your humble reviewer believes that the destiny of certain very special sequels is not merely to entertain, not merely to make money, but to strike a chord within the viewer that makes you realize how much you enjoyed the original and want to see it again.

So it was that at the halfway point of this movie I decided to go to the Amazon site and order the original CTHD. Only with the perspective of this lop-sided followup can the beauty, the genius, of the original be appreciated.

That said, a lot of top talent try very hard to salvage this title but aside from some amazing fight scenes -- scenes which by themselves are almost worth the price of the ticket -- it just keeps letting you down.

Yen's performance here made me appreciate his restraint in the 3 Ip Man movies even more. And watching the increasingly heavy Jason Scott Lee reminded me that when he first debuted on the scene, he played a very svelte Bruce Lee. And any film with Michelle Yeoh is always worth a look.

Have a glance here, but cherish the original.

Sword of Destiny (2016) tries to pick up several years after the events of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) holds again in her hands Li Mu Bai's legendary sword, known as the Green Destiny, and here is where the forced elements starting to emerge... A ferocious villain and his clan is after the sword. A conflicted young couple is needed to enrich the plot and to give a feel of Zhang Ziyi who is missing from the cast. A character who I wont spoil you who he is, played by Donnie Yen, and who has an unbelievable connection with the first movie. And of course the usual revenge sub-plots etc etc.

Unfortunately, the feel of the movie has nothing to do with Ang Lee's multi-awarded film. It feels like a generic wuxia movie. Too much cable-flying, most of it unnecessary if you ask me, uninspiring fights, over-processed and unnatural imagery... and the music, despite the reprize of Tan Dun's original theme from 2000, is not a perfect fit.

Overall: Yuen Woo-Ping, the grandmaster of kung-fu choreography makes a sub-par movie with CTHD2. You might want to check it out, out of curiosity if you liked the original more than 15 years ago. But honestly, despite the return of Michelle Yeoh don't expect much...

A kind of a throwback with characters that may remind you of Shaw Brothers movies. So it tries to combine the old with some new stuff. Especially the fact that this was filmed in English may alienate some people. But overall I do believe it works. It does have a returning Michelle Yeoh (ageless) who is great in this too. In addition we get Donnie Yen and his craftsmanship.

The action choreography is good and there is flying again (so if you didn't like the first one or thought it was ridiculous and "unreal", don't watch this either). The story is simple and while Yeoh's character admits that at one point, she almost redacts her point entirely at the end. Some may say she changed her mind. Whatever it is, the movie is more than decent enough, while never reaching the heights of the original (no pun intended).

Obviously their was a decent production budget and energy spend on this martial arts movie set in ancient China. Much effort went into (re)creating sets, costumes and choreography. That's the good part...

However, it's out of place to go through all the effort to evoke a historical time period, only to let all Chinese characters speak English (in a time period where only very few Chinese intellectuals would be able to speak any other other language than Chinese). Either the producers didn't have faith in a movie audience to read subtitles or to accept a movie with any other spoken language than English. The original movie did manage to do that however: to appeal as well to a mainstream audience AND lovers of exotic foreign language martial arts movies.

Sword of Destiny doesn't do anything which hasn't been done much better before. Martial Arts in itself as a genre, having being so popular mainly in the 70s and 80s has explored about any camera angle, fast montage and special effect. Tarantino already directed the ultimate homage in Kill Bill.

Sword of Destiny, although with some credits to the production in itself never amazes, unless you've never seen a martial arts movie before. Like in the previous Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon there is a lot of cable work and floating going on. As if fast paced and shot martial arts scenes weren't enough, in this series the fighting characters are elevated to near super heroes, resulting in choreography and fighting scenes which aren't credible anymore.

This is exactly where for instance Bruce Lee-flicks were far superior: as a viewer you saw incredible sequences but yet they remained credible. In Sword of Destiny the character has seized to be human and becomes a fantasy.

Sword of Destiny finally ends up being neither: too slick to be accepted by a die hard audience of authentic martial arts movies, too Americanized to appeal to lovers of historical art house costume movies.

Going through all the effort to evoke an ancient Chinese period and let all Chinese characters speak English is simply foolish.

Sword of Destiny is exactly where American mainstream cinema has gone wrong: in a cash-in attempt to 'Americanize' classics in other countries, they end up with would-be blockbusters without soul or authenticity what so ever. You watch it, you forget it: it's not good, not super bad either, it ends up being a movie you hardly remember the next day, unlike the original.

I definitely expected this to be weaker, more superficial and more action-obsessed than the original just judging by its trailer, but it was actually worse in many more ways than I had thought of.

First ugly thing that hits you is the ruined color gamut, with all colors squeezed into two narrow bands around red and green (like the "teal and orange" madness that has gripped Hollywood this past decade, but shifted to the side toward red and green). Why must you do this to our eyes, movie studios, why? What have we done to deserve this? What's next, having to buy premium versions of the movie just to get the rest of the color spectrum?

Next comes the complete lack of originality of whatever crumbs of a story there are in there, the entirely boring and soulless dialogue, the cardboard-thin characters that couldn't make you care about them if their lives depended on it, and ending with the mediocre fight scenes. The whole thing was centered around the fighting and they couldn't even get that part at the level of grace and artistry and impact of the fights in the original film.

And to top it all off, they reversed the languages and wrote the original dialogue in English and added Chinese as a dub. This isn't catastrophic - at least the dub is there so you can make the experience reasonably similar to the original -, but it's still somewhat annoying and a bad production choice.

This was a very poor use of Yeoh's potential. All in all, my favourite character ended up being the girl fighter from the villain's crew, who just did her job and did it well, without wasting our time with too much meaningless dialogue or with any other hopeless attempts at gaining a depth the screenwriters never gave her in the first place.

Note: Check me out as the "Asian Movie Enthusiast" on YouTube, where I review tons of Asian movies.

The first Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was released 16 years ago. I think it's a solid film and I enjoyed it quite a bit. There are other swordplay films that I enjoy more than that one, but overall I think it's deserving of its accolades. Now, after watching the trailers for Sword of Destiny, I gathered the impression that this would be a more generic period action movie that's less dramatically effective than its predecessor . . . and that's basically what I got. Over the past few days I've noticed that it has become instantly fashionable to bash on this flick, but I don't think it's as bad as its initial reputation suggests. It has its flaws, but I found it watchable.

For example, it actually looks quite lovely. It's nicely shot and has some impressive locations. The natural environments are captured well and have a bit of a variety; there are pretty forests, mountains, snowy locales, bodies of water, etc. It's nice to look at and looks professionally made. I feel like I need to say this because some people think that Netflix produced this film. I don't think that's true at all, actually. Unless I'm missing something, Netflix is just distributing it in conjunction with its theatrical release.

Unfortunately, the scriptwriting is significantly weak element here. The characters and the story are very generic, which makes this feel like a "by-the-book" genre movie. I almost feel like it's pointless to even discuss the plot in any detail. You have some martial arts masters who take in younger trainees with questionable morals, and some bad guy (who's bad . . . just because) tries to steal a special sword. If you've seen a number of wuxia films, there's nothing new that you're going to see here. The conflicts do not have a lasting dramatic impact, which means that you're basically just waiting for the next action sequence.

But fortunately, there are a number of good fights that are peppered throughout. The director here is Yuen-Woo Ping, who previously directed a bunch of entertaining action films in Hong Kong – a few of which include Iron Monkey (1993), In the Line of Duty 4 (1989), Tiger Cage (1988), and Drunken Master (1978). More recently he's been known for his action choreography in films such as The Matrix trilogy, Kill Bill, and the first Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon film. In terms of action, this guy knows what he's doing. Also, Sword of Destiny has some legitimate action movie stars with Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh. So you have some serious talent both in front of and behind the camera here, so the fights are generally good. The best of which involve Donnie Yen on an iced-over pond and Michelle Yeoh in a dark room (fighting a witch). There is use of wires (as expected) and some use of CGI (but not too much). Sometimes it does look a bit cartoony. There's nothing here that will rival the Ip Man films or The Raid films in terms of sheer awesomeness, but I found the action to be generally entertaining. And there was enough of it to make up for its dramatic flaws.

I don't know how they could take a masterpiece like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and destroyed it. This sequel has nothing of the first movie except for the title.

Maybe i am too harsh, but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was an epic movie, with good story line, legendary character in Li My Bai, great chemistry between characters and epic ending. So based on that my expectations for this movie were high. Plus if you put Donnie Yen, and Jason Scott Lee on top of that you would expect nothing less than the previous movie. But, no. In CTHD 2, the story is terrible, the characters are weak, empty and shallow,there is no connection between them, the directing is bad, and the worst part is, it's in English. The only good thing are the fighting scenes and they are average at best.

So to summarize this movie is an average Chinese kung fu movie with some decent action, sword fighting scenes. As a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel its a big disappointment and not worth watching.

I went into "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny" (SoD) with a mix of expectations. I remember loving "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (CTHD) went I saw it. How would this sequel match up? Actually, really well.

To begin, let's remove some false assumptions. Many are upset about the film being in English, unlike the original which was in Mandarin. But there are reasons for this that extend far beyond "Americanizing." In CTHD, some of the stars were not native Mandarin speakers and their accents were heavy. This led to ridicule in China. I believe that the English language filming is an attempt to correct that. Better to have a good foreign language dub than actors who struggle on film, in my opinion.

Furthermore, some have said that the fighting wasn't as good. One review I read said that the heroes had become super-heroes. I disagree. There is actually much less wuxia flying and more straight-forward combat. Is it stylized? Certainly. That's part of the genre. But it seems more grounded to me, than super-heroic. CTHD had some excellent fight scenes! But the star wasn't a trained martial artist and his moves looked clunky at times. Not so here. Donnie Yen is in top form and delivers a solid performance. It is especially satisfying to see him alongside Michelle Yeoh (the only carry over actor from CTHD). They fight and act well together.

But, SoD is more than fighting. The narrative is key here. In fact, the story for SoD is, in some ways, superior than CTHD. The story and character arcs build on what went before, so we find out more about the previous characters. Furthermore, some of the new characters have deeper connections and more layered stories.

The biggest difference between SoD and CTHD is the cinematography. At the risk of the oversimplification, CTHD seemed more artsy. That doesn't means SoD looks bad. It's just a different, more modern style. There are some breathtaking landscape shots that give the story scope! The film could also have been a little longer. There are some minor characters that I wish we would have been able to see more of before the end.

The direction, acting, fighting, and soundtrack all work well together, giving us a great film. For me, "Sword of Destiny" is an excellent follow up to the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

As a fan of the original movie I was really looking forward to the sequel. Of course the fact that Ang Lee wasn't directing it made me sceptical, but I thought I should give it a chance. Turns out that the movie pales in comparison to it's predecessor in terms of fighting choreography and story.

BUT the visuals were pretty good, the film looks pretty fantasy-like (which could be a turn-on or turn-off for some people) and the movie had some great fights and nice character interactions. The best part about this movie is the return of Michelle Yeoh and also some parts of the original soundtrack which gave me goosebumps at some parts of the movie.

Donnie Yen was also a great addition, though I'd prefer Zhang Ziyi to be a part of it...

At the end of the day it's a good martial arts movie with stunning fight scenes and a decent plot. Compared to the first movie it's kinda bland, but hey, you can watch it for free if you're a user of Netflix, so that's a plus.

Just don't expect another masterpiece and you might enjoy this.

Netflix strikes again! This time they chose to ruin the memory of a the 16 year old classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with a sequel that shines in being utterly boring. The film is only 100 mins long but it seems to last so much longer. The story is poorly constructed and there so little happening that halfway through the movie I hardly knew what is was about. Something about the titular sword, but it seems so unfocused and aimless. You never have the sense that the story is going anywhere or that the characters have some clear purpose. Also the characters are dull and the dialogue utterly uninspired. They did an effort to make it look good but strangely enough this film looks like a TV movie (well it actually is) that has this strong 'shot in a studio' look (much like War Horse for example). I didn't check the director before watching it but was very surprised Woo-Ping (action choreographer Matrix films) was at the wheel. So the action should at least be good right? Wrong, the fight scenes are slow and dull, not fast and furious. So I would recommend to skip this film entirely, certainly if you liked the original and want to keep your memory of it intact.

It was a decently enjoyable movie, i probably would have enjoyed it more if it didn't have the crouching tiger, hidden dragon tag to it (as it raised expectations)

Problems i had with it were that it was rather short, there was almost no character development, the story line was quite clichéd and the fight scenes didn't seem as fluid as the original, the musical score wasn't nearly as impressive as the original either.

I am struggling to find anything about the film that is better than average.

Overall not a bad film, just not something i will watch again, A generous 6/10

It is a pity that the name "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" in terms of movie history carries a heritage of a beautiful movie with real "actor's actors". This 2nd part was a big let down. As being Asian and having grown up with Chinese King Fu movies, for me this just looked like another Kung Fu movie made by the Shaw Brothers!!! If it had spoken Mandarin or Cantonese, there would have a good feel, and there really was no depth in the story, characters, ...etc,

Just another Shaw Brothers pic with the latest tech! There is no chemistry between the actors the only one good thing was that there maybe a new actress in the making "Natasha Liu Bordizzo" she felt real and had depth with Michelle Yeoh... the rest was as said before just walking & talking through the part, the script had no story. The photography is really good, but apart from mentioned above it was let down... But if you feel there nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one coming... simply if you have "NOTHING" to do then this will ease the boredom... Sorry but as said was a another Shaw Bros. movie except they were all talking in English!!!

It's not always about the plot or even the acting. Sometimes its the soaring set pieces, the authentic, if expanded Chinese martial arts work, especially swordplay. The HDR processed and CGI enhanced landscapes. To criticize the nature of the visuals is to misunderstand the fantasy nature. Like putting down a graphic novel for not being a serious mystery. Good for what it intends to be, that is by its own genre.

The abundant fight sequences reflect actual Chinese open hand and weapons styles, though overdone for effect with wire work thrown in. But the roots are solid and make the movie more fun for those who have studied the basic of Wu Shu.

Good cast, predictable but good screenplay and good music score. This was a film that was easy to follow and worth the time invested. If you like old school, but well created martial arts films, you should enjoy this title ... I know I did ...

Crouching tiger hidden dragon (part 1) is certainly one of the best martial arts movie ever, due to deep characters , love and emotion, short but extraordinary fighting scenes, beautiful scenery and magnificent music.

With Donnie Yen and Michelle, fantastic 4K scenic pictures and music reminiscent of the first part the sword of destiny had many ingredients to make our expectations high. However what was delivered is just saddening.

The plot is clearly lacking quality failing to elaborate on the different characters and transporting emotions. While we could feel the love and respect between Michelle and Li Mu Bai in part 1 we are completely lacking same in sword of destiny. If a movie is not deep than only action can partially compensate this lack,

Again we get shocked of what we are being presented. Fighting scenes much below capabilities of Donnie Yen and everyone else. For example in the fight scenes of part 1 between Michelle Yeoh and the young Zhang ZhiYi the green sword of destiny is really the matchmaker in a well orchestrated dramatic fight. Going back to the classic *The Sword" with Adam Cheng we find another sample of incredible fight scenes where the sword is making the little difference between the two world best fighters in a culminating dramatic fight. Same movie (The Sword) we find a fantastic elaboration of how a ninja stealth fighter attacks incredibly out of nowhere, bringing our hero into serious trouble. What happened to sword of destiny plot... where the strange lady in red is kind of mimicking this ninja style against Michelle Yeoh. Sword of destiny is so far behind the classic. Also we find much better elaboration of similar fighting style in Azumi 2 ... The makers of Swords of Destiny are clearly not deep into martial arts and deliver zero.

Sword of destiny does not include surprises, no long or convincing fight scenes, no drama... Characters are introduced, fight, die... Without anything appealing to the spectator.

My advice to Netflix: next time do not just hire great actors. Hire the best movie makers. Clearly 14 blades with Donnie Yen is the best martial arts movie of this decade. This is the caliber that should have been delivered and this is the crew that should have made sword of destiny. This movie outperforms with incredible fight scenes not seen before and leaves you crying at the sad end. Sword of destiny delivers none of that.

Not a masterpiece like the first, but a solid movie. It lacks the magic elegance of Ang Lee's film, but, although the original language is English, it feels somehow more authentically Chinese.

In a world were evil is real and eternal, an unavoidable aspect of human destiny, the baddies are more than caricatures, tragic figures themselves. I may add that I have a feeble for Asian "femmes fatales", so that the duo Blind Enchantress (Eugenia Yuan) and Mantis (Veronica Ngo) proved irresistible.

Add to that a couple of technically memorable fight scenes, some good jokes and the movie, despite its recurrent clumsiness, raises unmistakably above mediocrity.