So here's the gist of it: Phoenix Black, a pretty young woman in China two hundred or so years ago, a one-dimensional victim of the director's need to rehash the silly-teen-girl-who-loves-to-shop jokes, inherits the powers of the White Dragon via simulated computer-download. Because she's in love with the Prince, she must fight to save him from the country's top assassin, a man named Chicken Feathers. She is aided by Gene, a young man with an impressive knowledge of modern forensics.
Throughout the course of the story, though, Phoenix finds out that Chicken Feathers is a decent man, and falls in love with him as well. Now she must learn where her loyalties lie and uncover the mystery of who hired Chicken Feathers to assassinate the Prince.
To be fair, if you can stomach the first twenty minutes of silicon-age silliness blending with feudal China affairs, and the last ten minutes of western-world make-me-puke-mega-happy-endings, then the rest of the show ain't so bad. Though the wire-fu is growing tiresome, the sword play is decent. The love story is slightly appreciable, though on the whole less than respectable.
Cecilia Cheung, who's always delightful to see does an admirable job of taking a lame role seriously, and she gets to play a character with two cool names: Phoenix Black and White Dragon, Jr. The other supporting characters are just silly. The conspiracy story is dumb and over-abused in Western cinema. The blind assassin with a pure heart story is even more over-abused in Eastern films. I would have hoped that something coming out of Hong Kong would have had more substance.
The worst of the film, though, is that the director tries to blend modern silliness akin to Leslie Nielsen's Mr. Magoo (actually, you could reference just about anything Nielsen has done for the last twenty years) with all the pageantry of Eastern period-piece films. What you end up with is computer download power transfers, and a débutante of ancient China playing ancient Chinese songs on a flute while acting like a rock star and stage diving.
Needless to say, the mixing just doesn't blend. People who honestly express the thought that this is a great movie only demonstrate their foolishness, and an all-too-frightening penchant for idiocy.
