Hidden Blade

Yibo’s performance seals Hidden Blade’s status as an unexpected pleasure. Once finally assembled, its cinematic intricacies yield infinite rewards.

While China’s propaganda department made sure the film was imbued with a definitive moral, there’s a subtle pleasure in a spy story otherwise intoxicated with its own smokescreen.

I found the whole “Hidden Blade” rather less satisfying than its individual component parts. The many characters, myriad plot points and points of view and added complications with the narrative timeline clutter things up. But scene after immaculately-realized, quietly-menacing scene pays off.

The bluntness keeps the film from approaching greatness, although history buffs and genre fans might appreciate a World War II story told from a unique, non-Western perspective.

However crisp and stylishly executed, the parts don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole.

These episodic sketches immediately feel monotonous since the plot isn't arranged in chronological or sequential order; leaps in time from 1945 back to 1941 and then forward to eventually 1944 are a distracting overcompensation for an otherwise lifeless chain of impersonal betrayals, cold-blooded murders, and unbelievable moping from all involved.

While it is imminently watchable, it’s a movie that consists of mostly people sitting at tables with fantastic period clothing plotting and scheming, but sometimes barely moving at all.