How badly does Zhang Yimou need Christopher Doyle? Take just about any wide exterior shot from Zhang's House of Flying Daggers and compare it to any similar shot from the director's previous Hero. The earlier film is an intoxicating expressionistic riot of color and light; in contrast, the new one is a series of picture postcards — pretty in a mundane way, but ultimately banal.

Yes, this is a case of merely sumptuous photography being compared to something miraculous, and it almost seems unfair. House of Flying Daggers is brimming with visceral pleasures, from the rhythmic fierceness of the martial-arts sequences to the simple photography of the faces of Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang Ziyi — watching a movie like this, I think one of the things filmmakers sometimes forget, in the headlong rush of pure story and action that’s fashionable these days, is how to let an actor just be on the screen. The two of them have plenty to do, for sure — Zhang Ziyi’s performance in a cinematic confection called “the echo game” is a strong contender for scene of the year, and both she and Kaneshiro hand out their fair share of ass-whuppin — but, in the air between violent set pieces, cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding treats them both with reverence they’ve earned and the intimacy they deserve.

For more than half its running time, Flying Daggers is a terrific piece of genre filmmaking. The early meeting between undercover policeman Jin (Kaneshiro) and the blind Mei (Zhang) — she’s a member of an insurgent gang known as the House of Flying Daggers that he’s seeking to infiltrate — takes place in a brothel during an extended sequence that’s riveting in its fanciful physicality and eventually cacophonous sound design. Once Jin goes on the run with Mei, the film settles into a comfortable, satisfying rhythm that alternates light romance with furious martial-arts fighting.

As Jin gets to know Mei, his feelings for her jeopardize his sense of professional duty — a story straight from the genre playbook, but Zhang feels the need to twist it even more. Once the two of them arrive at Flying Dagger HQ, the film tumbles into a talky rut from which it never quite recovers. Then again, the film’s final romantic flourish, involving an unexpected snowfall, is a doozy. So much of House of Flying Daggers is so good that I was pre-writing this review, breathlessly, as I watched fierce battle sequence after stunning set piece unfolding on the screen. Is it possible, I wondered, that the gorgeously executed Hero was nothing more than a dress rehearsal for this even-more-terrific follow-up? Alas. Perhaps still smarting from criticisms leveled at Hero, which can be read as a glorification of totalitarian principles, Zhang steers well clear of political specifics in favor of third-act melodrama. Even Doyle, casting spells behind the camera, might have had trouble making magic out of this stuff — without any real sense of what, other than the foregone conclusion of love-sweet-love, these bigger-than-life characters are fighting over, House of Flying Daggers just grinds tediously toward a final, teary showdown.