King Hu's A Touch of Zen is an epic martial arts movie that needed to be whittled down from its 200-minute running time to 100 minutes. The plot is so convoluted that I won't get into it in this review, but suffice it to say that they should have gotten a continuity editor. Or several of them. The movie played like a serial novel with installments every 30 minutes in which mysteries are revealed to be bigger mysteries, bad guys are killed off so that more evil ones can take their place, and boring expository landscape shots take up at least 5 of those 30 minutes. I estimate that approximately 1/6 of this movie is footage of trees, rocks, or spider webs. Hu seemed to like shooting spider webs for some reason. He also liked shooting at night with limited to no lighting, which made half the movie an absolute pain to watch. He even shot a lot of the fight scenes at night, all of which were unconvincing and went on for far too long. I don't care how many good wuxia movies this inspired (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers to name an obvious few), it's still not a good movie.
Though the storyline was excessively ludicrous, there were some good parts here and there. I especially liked the planning of the ghost trap, its execution, and its consequences. Unfortunately, this section was only 1/3 of the total movie. If it had ended it, I might have given A Touch of Zen a 3 or 4. Instead, it goes on for another hour so it could beat its Buddhist message into your head. Other aspects of the movie I liked were the music and, as contradictory as it sounds, the obnoxious, over-the-top acting. Despite the frequent failings of the cinematography, there were some truly beautiful shots peppering the 3+ hours. But these elements just aren't compelling enough when looking at the whole of the film to truthfully recommend it to anyone but wuxia history buffs.IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0064451/