Best remembered as the unwieldy epic that stressed out Wong Kar-wai into a head-clearing hiatus (the fruit of which was Chungking Express), this is one of the most lyrical-radical of wu xia treatments, misread just as often as a bungled exercise in martial-arts mayhem. A swordsman (Tony Leung Ka Fai), mane and robes flowing in the wind for a tilted camera, slashes the air and precipitates an earthquake that vanquishes an army of horsemen -- the images slanted for parodical angles, with Wong perversely staging Sammo Hung's melees as bewildering blurs, action fractured into pixilated slow-motion. Indeed, the genre's required showdowns play second fiddle to the characters' melancholic languor, longing around a desert hut for the director's themes of time, being, and loving (the "tumult of the heart" of the opening Buddhist crawl is the main focus here). Leslie Cheung is the central dreamer, in the killing-for-hire business, watching as the all-star Hong Kong cast strolls by the sands of memory: Brigitte Lin in male drag as a vengeance-bent noblewoman tracking down a lost love, Tony Leung as a warrior losing his sight, shoeless fighter Jacky Cheung and his wife Li Bai, and virginal Charlie Yeung standing by the side of the road. As in Wong's contemporary humid reveries, the moment that slips through their fingers haunts the characters, here finding the stability of their genre iconography eroding with the transience of their emotions. The past, whether hometown peach blossoms or a woman's love, reverberates through the desert, every encounter echoing an attempt to connect with it -- shadows from a wicker birdcage projected onto faces, a lovelorn schizo caressing a slumbering warrior while imagining her beloved, a defeated swordsman's mug gradually emerging in close-up as he reveals redemption through a girl's love. Leslie Cheung may hope to flee the past by gulping amnesic wine, but the pain and ecstasy of memories in Wong's universe, tracking in on Maggie Cheung's exquisitely shaded sadness, never simmer far. Cinematography by Christopher Doyle.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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