Let's say you're at the multiplex one night watching a typical Hollywood action movie, and your date leans over and unexpectedly asks, "Why'd the character do that?" Once recovered from the shock of such a naïve query, you'll answer as swiftly and directly as a blow to the solar plexus: "To kick the other guy's ass!"

Of course. What other motivation could there possibly be? We need not expect anything more. This is cinema stripped to its very essence, after all. Man vs. man in a primal battle of muscle and feral instinct! Niceties such as "plot" or "characterization" would merely get in the way of the next action scene.

Such has been the thinking of most movie producers catering to the desires of their short-attention-span-loving audiences. Stories in modern action films serve merely as excuses for bloody spectacle: "Say, if somebody cloned Arnold without him knowing about it, then he'd really have to go kick some ass!" Likewise, "characters" exist only as devices to prod the fighting along (evil minions try to bump off Arnold, ergo Arnold must kick their asses). This isn't exactly a wrong way to make movies, and sometimes it can work fine. But after sitting through your hundredth one-man-killing-machine extravaganza, a certain numbing effect settles in–not necessarily numbness to violence, but rather to mediocre entertainment.

It takes a film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to remind us of how great action movies can be. While it certainly delivers the two-fisted goods, it does so in the context of a genuine story peopled by complex characters who have something more on their minds besides wreaking vengeance. Epic, graceful, poetic, and more entertaining than a hundred SchwarzVanSeagal pics, Crouching Tiger is an immersive adventure whereas most Hollywood action pics are shallow exercises in blood-bag pyrotechnics. Who knew action could also entail acting?

Certainly, Michael Curtiz did with 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Akira Kurosawa with Seven Samurai. But Taiwan-born Ang Lee–creator of art-house favorites like Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm–seems to be one of a very few current directors to have remembered it. Legions of the Hong Kong faithful (Blessed be Jackie Chan! All hail John Woo!) may find offense at that declaration, but the pleasures offered by Hong Kong action flicks are more about cartoon bombast than resonant storytelling. Even as Crouching Tiger's characters leap and gambol across palace roofs and temple mountains, their emotions and motivations are rooted in reality. And that's an accomplishment for any mass entertainment, action flick or not.

Based on an old Chinese pulp-fiction story by Wang Du Lu, Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon takes an unusual perspective for a martial arts tale–a feminine one. Michelle Yeoh stars as Yu Shu Lien, a famed warrior who is entrusted by her equally famous comrade-in-arms Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) to deliver his ancient sword Green Destiny to their eminent friend Sir Te. Li Mu Bai has decided to lay down his sword so that he may at last live his life–and reveal his love for Yu Shu Lien, though he hasn't quite gotten around to it yet (although I'm sure there are many Freudian conclusions to be made about Li Mu Bai relinquishing his sword to a woman, etc.). After Yu Shu Lien delivers the sword, a masked thief who can seemingly fly through the air steals it. Could it be Jade Fox, the assassin who is Li Mu Bai's sworn enemy? Or perhaps Jen (Zhang Ziyi), the seemingly frail daughter of a visiting governor?

While most kung fu movies would begin and end on plot-point A ("Get the sword back."), Lee carefully peels back the layers of a much more complex story: of a young women trying to discover herself. Jen is, of course, not whom she appears to be at first–but she isn't really sure who she is yet, either. She is offered many directions to take–evil or good, love or duty–yet she doesn't want to make herself beholden to any one path. Her choice will affect the lives of all the other characters, and it is this choice that becomes Crouching Tiger's true central conflict–not simply whether the good guy will defeat the bad guy by chopping his head off in time.

Inner conflicts and emotional truths aside, though, Crouching Tiger does indeed feature some of the most thrilling fight scenes on film. Employing master fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping (you know, The Matrix guy), Lee unleashes balletic sequences that soar, literally. When combatants take flight over clay rooftops or bob aloft in a canopy of green bamboo, you fly with them. Crouching Tiger expresses such a pure physical giddiness and joy of acrobatics that you want to join in, like a child does while watching Peter Pan for the first time. (As much as I liked the fight sequences in Gladiator, for instance, I didn't exactly daydream about joining Maximus in the arena.)

While there are probably a few nits to pick here and there, they really aren't worth dissecting. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon makes other action movies look as lifeless as their characters.

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