Echo Drum Song

Although I must have seen House of Flying Daggers (2004) while this blog was up, it looks like I haven't blogged it. Now that I own a copy and rewatched, I realized that I remembered very little. So here goes.

In corrupt Tang dynasty China, the House of Flying Daggers is a covert rebel group that fights the establishment. Andy Lau of the Imperial Guard assigns captain Kaneeshiro Takeshi to investigate a new dancer at a local pleasure house. This dancer is the blind Zhang Ziyi. Kaneshiro plays drunk and doesn't believe she is blind, so they play the Echo Game: A circle of drums are set up and Kaneshiro flips a bean at one. Zhang must respond by hitting the same drum with her sleeve while dancing. This is pretty much the only scene I remembered. He is so impressed that he assaults her, leading to a raid, and Zhang is imprisoned.

To gain her confidence, Kaneshiro breaks her out of jail and has a mock fight with the guards trying to get her back. It looks like she is falling for it, and will lead him to the leader of the Flying Daggers. But the guards get orders to kill both of them, and start fighting for real. So Kaneshiro begins to doubt his loyalty to the regime.

I'll just drop a big SPOILER here: It turns out that Lau was an undercover Flying Dagger all along, and the whole operation was planned to turn or neutralize Kameshiro (I'm a little fuzzy on that). Oh, and Zhang isn't blind. And Lau and Zhang were lovers, but she's now in love with Kaneshiro. So mixed up!

There are some great set pieces, including the Echo Game, several fights in a bamboo forest, and a final duel in a blizzard. And, although the plot is twisty, I actually could sort of follow it. I guess Zhang Yimou's costume epics are a little easier on Western sensibilities that some