Oh dear. It all went a bit wrong. House Of Flying Daggers could have been a great film. The premise (police hunting for the leader of a dissident sect) lends itself perfectly to be an impressive martial arts film with large and small scale battles between the two factions. Instead, the film focusses on the growing love between two characters on opposing sides.
The poor Romeo And Juliet plot is further let down by the twists: weak bluff after bluff after “Aha” after double bluff, not a single one enhancing the film at all.
The final act was particularly weak, with one of the two male characters being picked fairly arbitrarily as the villian and the plot meandering from there.
Dull, lengthy cinematics only gave way to one or two reasonable fight scenes. A shame.