Unworthy ‘Tiger’
I must confess my amazement at the lavish critical praise (particularly as shown in Kenneth Turan’s review, “What Women Flip Over,” Dec. 15) being heaped upon Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
While admittedly the film did have some amazing action sequences, they were undercut by a banal, cliched, rambling, badly structured script. Lee could learn a few lessons from Akira Kurosawa, who managed the trick (in films such as “The Hidden Fortress”) to make similar films that totally engrossed the viewer because the action sequences were in the service of a coherent, well-written script.
Perhaps it would be in the interest of Turan and other members of the L.A. Film Critics Assn. to watch these films ,so they wouldn’t have to bestow their honors on so unworthy an item as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
Just because a film is conceptually different doesn’t make it brilliant; it has to succeed in its execution as well.
STEVE FINKELSTEIN
Los Angeles
Only good movies
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