"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"

Ang Lee has given us one of the best films of the year. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" mixes "Star Wars" with Hong Kong action flicks to deliver an amazing achievement. This film is subtitled and the greatness of it is the fact that you could strip away the words and you could follow the story.

The actors pull you into the story with the use of not only language but their whole bodies. Chow Yun-Fat stars with Michelle Yeoh as two warriors who love each other but cannot show their feelings due to something that happened in the past. As they try to go along with their lives the come upon Zhang Ziyi who is a young woman with extraordinary ability and has all the making of being the next great warrior. As in the Star Wars trilogy with Darth Vader trying to get Luke to come to the dark side, a sinister warrior named Jade Fox is trying to get Ziyi to crossover.

When you watch this film you will see some of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed. They were choreographed by martial arts expert Yuen Wo-Ping who you may not know by name but certainly by reputation, for he is the one who delivered the fantastic walk walkers in "The Matrix". But the real kudos go to Ang Lee who filmed the fight scenes so you could watch from various angles and speeds. As Fred Astaire had said to let the audience see him dance, not just his feet or his face but his whole body, and Lee lets us see these actors dance.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" will amaze you with its action and leave you in awe with the cinematography and love stories. For those of you who don't want to read a movie, go to this movie and let your senses take it all in.