I wasn't expecting House of Flying Daggers to be the best movie, because of the reviews I have read, but I wouldn't have paid to see it if I would have known it was going to suck. This movie got an 88% on rottentomatoes.com, which I used to think was good enough to go see. But after watching it and Collateral (85%) I am going to have to raise my minimum to 90%.
I can't help comparing House of Flying Daggers to Twilight Samurai. Twilight Samurai is also a martial arts love story. But there is a huge difference in the manliness of the men in Daggers to theTwilight Samurai. These two men are crying over each other, giving up on all of their ideals, not caring the slightest about honor - all for the "love" (more like a high school crush) of the woman, Mei. The Twilight Samurai, however, shows tremendous strength amidst hardship, honor, courage, selflessness, real love and manliness. Basically, one is inspiring and the others are not.
Plus, if Jin and Mei are so good at flying through the air, doing splits, dodging arrows and landing punches, you would think that they would be able to make better love than just rolling around in the field like animals.