Let's face facts, if you're here to see a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movie with high speed martial arts, then you are in for a disappointment. This is nothing like that at all, and what is left is breathtaking and beautiful to behold. Trying to relate this movie to the American Culture will leave you empty inside, especially with the ending. Trying to understand a different culture, one from at least a hundred years ago, will leave you with something entirely different. America's desire for a happy ending has left us spoiled, and this movie offers us something unusual that many do not want to accept, that in the end, it's not all roses and honey, and the ending is not always happy. One persons life may alter so many others, as the young girls life did here. Kudos to Ang Lee for bringing back a style and artform that many here in America have never seen, and should see more of.