Ashes of Time Redux (2008)

Ashes of Time Redux (2008) starring Leslie Cheung. In ancient China, a swordsman retreats to the desert to recover from the sting of an affair gone wrong. There, he acts as a middleman, hiring warriors for various tasks. This recut of the director's 1994 wuxia epic eventually features lots of stylized swordplay, but the Chinese philosophy, language and mindset behind the film make it confounding, at least to me. The movie is poetic and beautifully photographed, and after I saw it I felt that I had seen something, but I just wasn't sure what. Grade: B-