The central love story in "Crouching Tiger" is simply a disappointment. The current of feeling that connects Li and Shu Lien is clear from their first meeting, by the way their gaze is locked: They're longtime friends who would be lovers if not kept apart by circumstance. But Lee approaches the story with so much subtlety that it barely registers as significant -- a waste when you have two actors as effortlessly appealing as Yeoh and, especially, Chow.

With her fearless stunts, Yeoh won over American audiences in Jackie Chan's "Supercop." (She had made her mark much earlier in Hong Kong with pictures like the thrilling "Heroic Trio.") Yeoh's role here shows off her more nuanced skills as an actress -- she glimmers with quiet dignity, and her fight scenes are magnificent. But her sexual vitality remains too tastefully veiled; I want to see an actress as sparkling as Yeoh getting a little bit of enjoyment out of life, and out of love, not just suffering nobly every minute.

The same goes for Chow's Li. There's a reason Chow is the most popular movie star in Asia: He's damn sexy, especially as the dazzling center of John Woo's best films ("The Killer," "Hard Boiled"). His expressiveness is extraordinary: He can menace or seduce with the mere arch of an eyebrow. (Even 200-year-old-plus creatures of the night aren't immune to his charms. In a recent episode of the WB's "Angel," the preternaturally depressed vampire brightened visibly when he heard that two of his colleagues had bumped into Chow at a Hollywood party.)

But here, Chow, like Yeoh, is so constrained that he's practically relegated to the background. His sensitivity and sly grace as an actor aren't in question: There's plenty of liquid longing in the way he looks at Yeoh. But we never get the chance to warm up to the couple even as dream lovers in another life. Their romance doesn't have to be florid (in fact, that would be a mistake), but as it is, it's so vaporous that there's no tension in it. It's less like unrequited passion than a Zen pool that the two of them stare into endlessly.

Lee doesn't have the warmth to make a great love story. The consolation prize is that the action sequences in "Crouching Tiger" are bounteously seductive -- choreographed by Yuen Wo-Ping (whose previous credits include "The Matrix" and numerous Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Sammo Hung pictures), they're the best-staged action sequences I've seen at the movies in years. The actors' movements are clearly shot: It's always easy to tell who's where and how he or she got there. The camerawork is artful but not showy. Every shot is designed to sustain the illusion of reality; we're not constantly reminded, as with so many other contemporary action movies, that there's some hotshot cameraman muddling around to make things seem real.

In "Crouching Tiger," we simply believe that everything is real: Bitter opponents cross swords as they float among the treetops, as disdainful of gravity as they are of one another -- it's as if their enmity has more power than science does. Swords whoosh, sweep, clatter and clang as the figures wielding them spin, crouch, spring and, occasionally, draw blood. Characters skitter across rooftops, half flying, half running, their legs slicing the air with Bolshoi scissors kicks.

The fight sequences in "Crouching Tiger" are where Lee lets his passion reign, and they make you wish he'd unleash it more often. When he's busy this way, when there's no time or patience or need for his particular brand of rock polishing, his visual sense kicks into overdrive, and it's stunning. Few of the fight sequences in "Crouching Tiger" are earthbound: Characters are always taking flight, leaping incredible distances, springing from one corner of the frame to another with inhuman speed. Elsewhere, Lee's movie may suffer from torpor and a vision of repressed ardor that's so delicately rendered it looks like indifference. But when Lee's characters start fighting, love is in the air, and it's all around, as inescapable as an unseen enemy.

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