Ashes of Time Redux [Import]

I bought this DVD a year ago and just stared at it. It looked like a violent pure martial art movie, and being a Wong Kar Wai I worried I would not catch onto the plot and would have to watch it a couple times.

First, Brigitte Lin; knew her a bit from Chungking Express -- but wow she can act. Without giving the plot away I fell right into WTF is going on with her "character" and was totally surprised when it all came clear. She give hints with little things -- gestures, sounds, that seem "out of place" and then the Yin and Yang thing hit us over the head if we were not figuring it out.

The visuals are just stunning, and they occur all the way through the movie. The music -- largely re-recorded including the voices as they mentioned Leslie Cheung (having passed away in real life) created a real problem on the soundtrack -- but by good happenstance they found good "sound" for his parts.

The end brings it all together and we see how all these characters, seeming unconnected (all dropping by to see the Leslie Cheung for his "services") come together to make it all make really sad sense. So much truth in what is being said, it will hit too close to home for many I think. It did for me -- maybe everyone has their high school loves (or innocent loves) that did not survive because we were just too darn young to see our "life" at that moment and the importance of true love.

As usual for the "acquired taste" Wong Kar Wai film -- I highly recommend this

Also the documentary "making of" is terrific, runs about 10 minutes and is worth a peek even before you watch the movie.

Years ago I watched the first version of this movie and it broke my heart. I mean, after delicate and audio-video-stunning movies as 'In the Mood for Love', '2046', or 'Chungking Express', I expected nothing less from Wong Kar Wai. Unfortunately, this film disappointed me (a lot!). A convoluted, great story, but really poor image and sound, which actually cut the mood. And the ridiculous 2 cents sword fights, good enough for your regular asian swords movie, but utterly out of place here. And all the confusion - who said what, who did what...

After 4 years or so of hard work rebuilding the movie from 'parts', spread here and there on planet Earth (the original master is lost), here we are - there was, indeed, light! The author said in one of the interviews put on the redux version DVD that he didn't want to change anything and he kept the original version, only remastered, with better audio and video. Well, it's a plain lie! He reorganized the sequences, made some subtle but significant changes in dialogue lines, got rid of the unnecessary battle sequences and stylized a bit more the others etc. - eventually we have almost the same movie, but a really different one at the same time. The story, image, acting, music, philosophy, feeling - are all true Wong Kar Wai now and this is one of his most important works, equal to the above mentioned films in greatness. I strongly recommend it to anyone in love with those movies.

Everything is exactly as mentioned in the other reviews. I haven't seen the regular version of this movie, but I don't care to because I enjoy this version. The storyline involving the girl who disguises herself as a guy gets a little confusing, and thus weird, but it really isn't key to the greater story. This isn't an action movie, it is more reflective. Something to watch every once in a blue moon.