Master Li Mu Bai (Yun-Fat Chow) leaves his training to return to the love of his life Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) but they haven't told each other of their feelings yet, although whenever they look in each other's eyes they dribble visibly.

Li Mu Bai returns his ("Green Destiny") sword but it is stolen by Jen Yu (Mandarin version)/Xiou Long (English dubbed version) (played by Ziyi Zhang) - she is an accomplished fighter whom Li Mu Bai offers training at Wudan.

"The wire fighters in this movie have all of the elegance of a very drunk Superman with weights on his ankles."

"Wire fighting just looks like they're being pulled up on wires to me. I much prefer the elegance of Peter Pan - arms outstretched and legs tight behind - second on the right and straight on till morn..."

"This movie wafted me back in time to whence I was a child. I played with the marionettes my great grandfather left me in his bucket. I never quite got the knack (couldn't be bothered, to be honest) of making them walk to the left and then to the right, so made them fly across the stage, mostly to the annoyance of my elderly audience. How wrong my critics were! If only I had kept that performance going I might have won an Oscar for staging the wirefighting in this movie!"

"Some of the fighting scenes really do need to be slowed down a little."

"I find it most hypnotic, watching the English version and then seeing the subtitles. A master class in how to dub a movie. Although, on the downside, I now get dizzy at the slightest attempt to do a spinning round house."

Li Mu Bai is poisoned by a stray dart from Jade Fox. The antidote is not found in time so there's lots of time for our heroes to look, yearningly, into each other's eyes. Jen Yu comes back on side and goes to find an antidote after Jade Fox is killed.

But, the lovers, who shoulda told of their love before now in any case, are parted in the most unfortunate of tear jerky ways.

A small masterpiece. A beautifully shot picture filled with love's unspokenness. Not really as visually stunning as the Last Emperor, but it is beautiful none the less, and highly emotional.

A timeless tale of love amongst warriors (a man and a woman). But, then, one of the should be lovers dies in the most tragic of slow motion ways. For a lover to die like that is one thing, for a proud warrior to go all floppy like that is nothing short of a disaster. From superbly competent, vigorous, fighter, our hero is incapacitated to nothing short of Sunday-morning in-bed-lie-in levels of activity, but without the coffee, croissants and newspapers strewn all over the place. And then he croaks it. Not a dry eye in the house!

A triumphant movie which at the time was much acclaimed. In truth the movie is good, although not great. The wirefighting is very artificial, almost to parody standards, offering little feeling of flight, but at least you can't see the strings!

It won four Oscars and was in a lot of movie top tens in 2000 when it was released.

A fine movie, the story is touchingly old fashioned and the acting is superb.