| Astonishing action set pieces serve as punctuation marks for a piquant romantic melodrama in Zhang Yimou's second effort in the wuxia genre. |
| Hidden somewhere deep in these two gushy hours of melodrama lie the makings of a vaguely watchable film. |
| There was some speculation that he might simply be laying the melodrama on thick for the benefit of the crowd, but I don't see it. |
| There is a plot, and it is brilliant, with the urgent melodrama that exercises the neglected readerly muscles. |
| It invites us to join the melodrama, keying our responses to the silly excess of the movie itself. |
| The most important point to make is that the aesthete and intellectual showed not the least reservation with flagrant melodrama. |
