It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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.

I saw the DVD of this movie in a local HMV store and on the cover it said that it outsold 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' in Hong Kong. I read the back and it sounded very interesting. The DVD contained 2 discs - the international version and the Director's cut. I opted for the Director's cut as I like to see films the way the Director intended.So, I bought it, sat back and pressed play. I was absolutely amazed - the story was fascinating, steeped in Eastern mysticism, the acting was superb (especially Aaron Kowk as Cloud and Ekin Cheng as Wind, the two principal leads) and the special effects were mind blowing. I won't give the story away and to be honest, the plot wouldn't do justice to the way the film's made and how entertaining it really is. Ideas are thrown in one after the other, Lau's direction is assured and there are set pieces which defy belief (for example, when Wind is fighting the fire dragon in the cave).It's simple, if you have a chance to see this, then watch it. Watch the Director's version though - the International version is many minutes shorter and badly dubbed.

Unlike Hollywood films which use special effects which look out of place this film actually has entire sets which are computer generated and special effects which are needed to create the comic book illustrations and work extremely well when showing the power of the main characters. Both of the main actors play out their roles perfectly and really become the characters. After watching this film I am now ordering the Duel and a man named hero also directed by Andrew Lau

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 =)