REVIEWED - HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS/SHI MIAN MAI FU: Zhang Yimou's smashing historical epic is a sumptuous swirl of colour and movement, writes Michael Dwyer

AN invigorating Chinese cocktail of romantic melodrama and spectacular action sequences, House of Flying Daggers tells a tangled tale set in 859 AD, as the corrupt Tang dynasty is in decline and a guerrilla band named the House of Flying Daggers is spreading unrest across the land, robbing the rich to feed the poor.

Even when their leader is killed, the House continues to thrive, and two police captains, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), are assigned to capture his successor. Aware that the murdered leader had a blind daughter, they become suspicious when they see Mei (Zhang Ziyi), a beautiful blind courtesan, dancing at the ornate brothel, the Peony Pavillion, and they devise a plan to arrest and question her.

The complicated plotting - in which all three protagonists pretend to be other than they really are - functions primarily as a framework to trigger and support a series of deliriously staged set-pieces. Chief among them are the exhilarating Echo Dance sequence inside the Peony Pavillion, involving nuts, drums and a dancing, flying Mei; a battle in a bamboo forest, pitting rival forces against each other high in the trees, leaping through the air and, for old time's sake, on the ground; and a beautifully composed finale during a snowstorm.

The movie's director, Zhang Yimou, is a supreme stylist, an accomplished cinematographer who turned director in the late 1980s with a number of deeply involving and visually striking personal pictures and political allegories (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern), and he raised eyebrows (and lowered some others) when he turned to martial arts for his previous picture, Hero.

House of Flying Daggers is a sumptuous fusion of elements drawn from both ends of that spectrum, combining chastely passionate love scenes, vigorous swordplay and wirework, astonishing archery, admirably restrained editing, gorgeous music and superb use of sound. At the centre of this lavish, highly entertaining audio-visual experience is the ethereal Zhang Ziyi, oozing star quality like never before. Michael Dwyer